The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  “He can’t?” I said. “Why not?”

  “They talk to me because I’m like them.”

  “You mean, because you’re an angel?”

  “No. I’m so terribly close to Nameless, Doyle, I don’t think you can understand. All that stands between me and them is a chunk of marble and a name given to me mostly by accident. I won’t Fall, but it would be so easy to fade back into the Consensus.”

  “But you won’t,” I said, more than a little alarmed.

  “Oh no,” said he, cheerful again. “There’s too much I haven’t learned yet.”

  Jones arranged his forces with considerable expertise, putting Crow and the Nameless together in a recessed doorway where they would look like two Nameless, gathered together as Nameless always were, waiting for another job; put the rest of us in a knot of conversation, like sightseers who had gotten themselves lost; and himself went down on the dock to have a word with Mordecai Smith.

  “Isn’t that taking an awful risk?” I asked Forbes.

  “Your odds are about fifty-fifty,” Forbes said. “Either you spook him by talking to him or you spook him by not talking to him. Because even if old Mordecai hasn’t spotted us, you can be sure his kids have.” And a glance showed me one of the younger boys staring at us.

  We had not been there long when I heard the uneven sound of a wooden-legged man’s footsteps. I resisted the impulse to turn and look. Presently, between the passersby, I could see a pair of bulky shoulders making their lurching way out to the Aurora. Jones was still out there, having what looked like a fairly vehement argument with Smith. I saw the moment when Small realized something wasn’t right. Another two steps, and he stopped completely, halfway between the quayside and the Aurora.

  “Right, then,” said Forbes and signaled to Crow.

  We converged on the dock: two angels, a necrophage, an augur, a vampire, a detective sergeant, and a half-lame doctor. Small looked around wildly, then with another burst of his surprising speed and dexterity, dodged past Jones and onto the Aurora.

  “You can’t run her yourself, Small!” Jones shouted. “Come out peaceable-like and it’ll go the better with you.”

  There was no answer from the launch. Mordecai Smith started to bluster, but Jones stared him down. “I told you, Scotland Yard. That man’s an escaped murderer. Best get your boys to safety.”

  Smith stopped blustering.

  At this point, another cab pulled up and three men got out of it; I recognized them as Overton and his friends. They came rushing angrily down onto the dock, shouting for Small, and only belatedly seemed to realize what they were walking into. By then, Forbes was already there, with Silvanov looming silently behind him. I couldn’t hear the exchange, with Jones shouting at the Aurora, but after only a few moments, Forbes blew his police whistle to summon any nearby constables, and Overton lowered his head into his hands in resigned and disgusted defeat.

  Jones said to Crow, “We’re going to have to go on the boat after him.”

  “He can’t go anywhere,” Crow said, “and he’s hardly going to jump in the Thames. Why not just wait him out?”

  “He might do away with himself, jumping in the Thames or otherwise. Alternatively, he might start laying booby traps. It’s best not to give him time to think.”

  But then Small appeared on deck, carrying an ornate iron box. His eyes were burning red, and his fangs were very close to dropping. “If I can’t have it,” he shrieked, “no one can!” and he heaved the box into the river.

  All of the assembled made noises of dismay and outrage, and Jones rushed onto the Aurora to arrest Small before he could follow his box into the Thames.

  “You’ll never find it,” Small was exulting as Jones herded him back to the quayside.

  “We can send divers down after the box, you fool,” said Jones.

  “Of course you can,” said Small, who was giggling now in a truly disturbing manner. “But the box is empty. I threw the treasure over the other side, piece by piece. No bigger than pebbles, those diamonds. Who’s to say how far the current will take them?”

  Someone—I think it was Master Moriarty—let out an anguished moan. The box had gone over the leeside of the Aurora and could well have gone straight down. But anything caught by the Thames’s current might make it all the way to the sea.

  Then the hemophages started yelling again, louder than ever, and the first constables appeared in answer to Forbes’s whistle, and the scene devolved into utterly predictable chaos.

  19

  The Christian Names of Dr. Doyle

  Much later that evening, I made a reluctant pilgrimage to the house of Mrs. Cecil Forrester. Miss Morstan deserved to know what had happened to the treasure, a share of which had hypothetically been hers, and more than that, she deserved that I should tell her the truth about myself, so that she would not be left wondering whether she had been imagining things or, worse, whether, since she was not an heiress, I considered her literally not worth my time. I dreaded the conversation, but the idea of her thinking I had merely been making a cynical gamble was excruciating.

  The first part went well enough. Miss Morstan and Mrs. Cecil Forrester were both agog at the adventure yarn (in which I had carefully changed all the names, just as I have done here), and when I had done, Miss Morstan said, “I can’t very well repine for a fortune I never had and don’t want. I’m just glad neither you nor Mr. Crow came to harm.” Her eyes widened. “But I owe you your fee, and Mr. Crow never even said what it is.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I said, “and Crow will not charge you anything exorbitant. He doesn’t really do this for the money.”

  “He almost forgot to bill me at all,” Mrs. Cecil Forrester chimed in.

  “But you’ve been to all this trouble,” Miss Morstan said. “And I’m perfectly capable of paying.”

  “No one said you weren’t,” I said. “But I help Crow as a friend, and what he charges you is a matter of his business, not of mine.”

  “You are a remarkable friend, Dr. Doyle,” said Miss Morstan, and I saw in her eyes the exact light I had hoped not to see.

  Mrs. Cecil Forrester made some transparent excuse and swept out of the room.

  The silence was paralyzing. I could think of no way to say any of the things I needed to, nor of any conversational gambit that might get her to talk while I tried again to find some way of explaining the matter without actually having to explain.

  Miss Morstan began to look uneasy. “Dr. Doyle? I thought you must want to speak to me.…”

  “I do,” I said. “That is, I feel that I owe you an explanation.”

  “An explanation?” Her expression changed from uneasy to angry. “No, there is no need for an explanation. I can give it for you: ‘I regret if any actions of mine, Miss Morstan, led you to believe I had any interest in you greater than pure and Christian friendship, for such was never my intent.’ Am I right?”

  Really, I should have said yes. Let her think of me what she would and disappear from her life as good riddance to bad rubbish. But at least half her anger was directed at herself, and I could not bear to let her go on thinking she had made a fool of herself.

  “No,” I said. “That’s not it.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, you weren’t wrong. I did—do—feel more for you than friendship. But I cannot ask you to marry me.”

  “Cannot? Why on Earth not?”

  And, God help me, I blurted out the truth: “I’m not a man.”

  “Not a man … Were you wounded?” Her gaze dropped involuntarily to my crotch. “I knew you had been badly hurt, but—”

  “No!” I said. “No, that’s not it. Mary, I am … I am my father’s only daughter. My Christian names are Joanna Henrietta.”

  “You’re joking.” She stared searchingly, almost pleadingly, into my face. “You must be.… You’re not joking.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing full well it was inadequate.

  She turned sharply
away from me; after a pause in which I could hear my own painful heartbeat, she said, in a voice that she could not quite hold steady, “I think you had best leave.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I thought I might.”

  I was grateful not to encounter Mrs. Cecil Forrester on my way out.

  * * *

  It was nearly midnight when I returned to Baker Street.

  “You’re back,” Crow said, surprised.

  “Of course I am,” I said. “Where else would I go?”

  “You and Miss Morstan aren’t celebrating?”

  “Celebrating what?”

  “Your engagement.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I am not engaged to Miss Morstan,” I said finally. “There was never any possibility of my being engaged to Miss Morstan.”

  “But you liked each other,” Crow said, his head tilting in bewilderment.

  “Good God, I need a drink.” I limped across to the sideboard, splashed whiskey into a glass, came back, and did not quite collapse into my chair.

  Crow had set aside his scrapbook and scissors. “Did you not want to marry Miss Morstan? I thought you did.”

  “That doesn’t enter into it,” I said and took a hard swallow of whiskey. I deplore drunkenness, but tonight it seemed like an awfully good idea. “I can’t marry her.”

  “I don’t understand. If you want to marry her, why can’t you?”

  “Because it would be incredibly cruel.” He tilted his head, obviously confused. “You know I’m a woman, Crow.” If he knew I was a hell-hound, he had to know that.

  “Yes,” he said, “but what does that have to do with it?”

  “Well, for one thing, it isn’t legal for two women to marry. For another thing, I feel quite sure that Miss Morstan doesn’t want to marry a woman.”

  “I don’t understand,” Crow said again, plaintively. “I can see that she likes you, just as I can see that you like her. Why does it matter that you are both the same sex?”

  There were so many answers to that and so many of them led to discussions I didn’t want to have. I settled on, “Most people, when they get married, want to have children. Miss Morstan and I wouldn’t be able to because I don’t have male sexual organs and therefore cannot reproduce with her.”

  “Oh,” he said and was silent for a long time, his brows knitted in the frown he showed when he was thinking hard. I sat and watched the fire in the grate and from time to time knocked back another slug of whiskey. The silence went on long enough that I thought maybe the conversation was over, but then he said, “Is that why you didn’t want to have sexual congress with me? Because you don’t have the correct organs?”

  I said, “No. I didn’t want to have sexual congress with you because I don’t like rape.”

  I was already drunker than I usually allowed myself. The word was vulgar, blunt, ugly; Crow flinched from it, his wings rustling. “But it isn’t—”

  “Isn’t it? You don’t feel sexual desire. Or is that not true?”

  “No, it’s true,” Crow said reluctantly, staring now at his hands. “God gave to Adam and Eve that which he gave not to the Angels of the Garden.”

  “Saint Augustine,” I said, recognizing the quote. “If you don’t feel sexual desire and someone coerces you into having sexual relations with them, I don’t see how it’s anything other than rape.”

  He did not answer. I took another swallow of whiskey. “You know,” I said, “the worst thing about pretending to be a man is that my name has to be a secret.”

  He did not look up, but his wings lifted, just slightly.

  “I told Miss Morstan,” I said, “because I didn’t know how else to make her understand, but it feels wrong that she should know and you should not. You were close, you know.”

  “I was?”

  “When you guessed that the H stood for a variant of Henry. It’s for Henrietta.”

  He was looking at me shyly, sidelong. “What does the J stand for?”

  “Joanna,” I said, and I felt something vague, foolish, but undeniably heavy roll off my shoulders. “My name is Joanna.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly, and I knew that he, of all people, understood.

  PART FIVE

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF EUPHEMIA RUCASTLE HEBRON

  20

  A Most Unusual Case

  I woke the next morning with a headache and a skin-crawling sense of embarrassment at my own behavior. There were reasons I did not get drunk, and keeping secrets was only one of them. But when I went out, Crow said, “Good morning, Doyle,” as cheerfully as ever, so that at least I knew he had forgiven me, as angels do and the Fallen do not.

  He read me bits of the newspaper stories about the arrests of Jonathan Small, Elias Overton, John Simpson, and Georg Richter, noting almost gleefully the way Jones seemed to absorb all the credit for the arrest, while the rest of us disappeared, except for phrases like “using his influence with the vampiric hunts.”

  “Of which Jones has exactly none,” Crow added.

  “Master Moriarty said she had no love for the police.”

  “Vampires prefer to have no dealings with the police at all. Although they are very careful about obeying the law, it’s not because they’re law-abiding by nature. It is true that if a vampire actually gives their word, they will keep it. It’s why they go to such lengths to avoid it.”

  The Star had gotten Jonathan Small’s exclusive interview, which was a tissue of self-justifications and lies. We were both indignant at the way he turned Anuvadaka into a bestial savage, claiming “Tonga” had murdered Bartholomew Sholto before he, Small, was even in the room. There was no mention of Small’s hemophagic condition.

  “Can Jones even prove he’s lying?” I asked.

  “He can prove he’s an unregistered hemophage, and there’s that attack in Lambeth that will get him convicted of murder again. But the only person who can disprove his story is Anuvadaka himself, and then it would be down to which one of them the jury believes. Small does admit he made ‘Tonga’ swear an oath of loyalty, so that if Anuvadaka does reappear, at least he’ll have that much protection.”

  I hoped Anuvadaka had the sense to stay hidden. It wasn’t as if Small was going to escape the gallows.

  We were interrupted by the doorbell, and Jennie ushered in a man and, surprisingly, a little girl.

  The man, over six feet tall and densely muscled, had an African complexion. He wore a dark suit, of good quality but plainly not bespoke by the way his shoulders strained at the fabric. He wore a brightly colored waistcoat, as the airmen did.

  He nodded politely to me and to Crow. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in a decidedly American voice. “My name is John Hebron, and this is my daughter, Lucy. We are hoping very much that you can help us.”

  The little girl was no more than eight, not as dark as her father; she was dressed soberly, and with her hair in two thick, beribboned plaits that nearly reached her waist. Her expression was solemn but hopeful.

  “I will certainly endeavor to do so,” said Crow. “My name is Crow, and I am the Angel of London. This is my friend, Dr. Doyle, whom you may trust as you trust me. Pray take a seat and tell us of your troubles.”

  John Hebron sat down, and his daughter climbed into his lap, where she gripped his waistcoat with both hands, as if fearing he should be taken from her.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said to Crow. “The matter concerns my wife, Euphemia. We fear very much that something terrible has happened to her.” Carefully, he removed a carte de visite from his waistcoat pocket and showed it to us. A young Caucasian woman, fashionably dressed with her hair braided around her head. The engraved name was Mrs. John Hebron.

  Crow, standing now in the middle of the room where his wings had at least a little space to move, nodded and said, “She is missing?”

  “No, I know where she is. But I cannot get in to speak to her.”

  Crow cocked his head. “Perhaps you had best begin at the beginning.”r />
  “You must understand that Effie is a faithful wife and a devoted mother. She would never willingly desert us.” The little girl hid her face in her father’s chest. “I am an engineer on the airship Friesland, and am away from home for long stretches. Our household consists of me, Effie, Lucy, Miss Macfarlane—who was Effie’s maid before we married and is now our housekeeper and Lucy’s nurse—and a ‘tween maid named Susan. I returned two days ago from the Cairo run and learned that Effie had gone missing only a few days after I had left. Miss Macfarlane told me that she—Effie—had received a letter in the morning post that had distressed her a great deal, and that afternoon, she had gone out without saying where she was going. She never returned. Miss Macfarlane was able to tell me that the letter was addressed to Miss Euphemia Rucastle—Effie’s maiden name—and it seemed obvious that it had to be from her father.”

  “He disapproved of your marriage?”

  “I’ve never laid eyes on him,” said Hebron. “All Effie ever said was that she did not care if he disowned her. I do know that he lives in Balham, in a house called the Copper Beeches. I did the logical thing and went to ask him if he knew where Effie was.”

  “And?”

  “The servants would not let me in the house and threatened to set the dog on me.”

  “Gracious,” said Crow.

  “I went back the next day, and the next. Finally a man answered the door actually holding the collar of a giant mastiff, and I do believe he would have let it savage me. After that I did not set foot on the property, but I have gone there daily in the hopes of at least seeing Effie. And then yesterday, something very strange happened. From the road, one has a particularly good view of the drawing room, and yesterday my attention was immediately attracted by a chair that had been placed before the center window, for it had not been there the day before. There was a woman sitting in it, in Effie’s favorite electric blue dress and with hair of Effie’s color—which is an unusually vivid chestnut. All of these things matched Effie’s appearance exactly, but I swear to you, Mr. Crow, it was not Effie.”