The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  There was nothing in the room but a staircase leading up. Seamie took the steps two at a time. He heard the police shouting at him through the door to come out.

  "Not a chance, boys," he said, climbing higher and higher. He finally got to the top, pushed open a door above his head, and found himself in the church's belltower. The tower was open on all four sides. The bell hung above his head. Below he could see the teeming high street, the buildings on either side of the church, and the alley which ran along the back of the church. There was no way down, not unless he had wings.

  He was trapped. The police would get the door unlocked or kick it down. It would be only a matter of minutes until they nabbed him. He swore, kicking the sides of the belltower. And then he spotted a neatly coiled pile of rope. It was all he needed.

  He would use the rope to rappel down the belltower, down the church's slanting roof, and onto the roof of the neighboring building. He'd done it a hundred times before. In the Rockies. The Adirondacks.

  No one would see him because no one in this godforsaken place ever looked up. He peered over the side of the tower. The drop was sheer. It was about ten yards to the slanting roof and another twenty to the closest building. The buildings stretched off from the church in both directions. From what he could see, most of them had roof doors. If he could just get to one, he could get back to the street.

  It might actually work, he thought. Or I might die.

  He bent down, reaching for the rope, then saw that one end of it rose up into the bell.

  "Great," he said. If he climbed down that, the bell would start to ring. The police would twig what he was up to in no time. They'd be waiting to catch him when he dropped. He had to silence it.

  There was an iron loop on the top of the trapdoor. Seamie grabbed the free end of the rope and pulled the entire length of it through the ring. The rope was long and it took time. When it was through, he made sure there was a little bit of slack in the portion that hung from the bell, then knotted the rope on the ring. By the time he finished he could hear pounding from below. The police were battering at the trapdoor with something heavy. He knew he had only minutes at the most. And no time to knot the rope around himself as he knew he ought to.

  He grabbed the rope, climbed over the railing, and righted himself against the side of the tower. No climbing boots. No chalk for his hands. If he managed not to fall and smash himself to pieces, it would be a miracle. He wanted to say a prayer--but he didn't know to whom. Jesus had gone in for fishing, not climbing.

  John the Baptist, maybe? No, he was a hiker. Strictly deserts.

  Quasimodo? Was he even a saint?

  The sound of shouts from below and the crunch of splintering wood convinced him that Quasimodo would do. He crossed himself, took a deep breath, and started his descent.

  Chapter 75

  "Something is strange, Ella."

  "I'll say so. Why does Yanki have to practice the �Kaddish Yatom' in the house? Why can't he go somewhere else to sing? Honestly, Mama, I feel like I'm at a funeral when he does this. Make him stop."

  "He's a chazzan. You know that. He must practice," Mrs. Moskowitz said absently, staring out of the sitting room window at the street.

  "He should go in the back alley, then, and sing to the tomcats," Ella groused.

  Yanki had a beautiful voice and normally she loved to hear him singing prayers--but not this one. The "Kaddish Yatom" was a prayer for the dead, and hearing it made her uneasy.

  "Mama, what are you doing at the window? Minding everyone else's business? Come away, already! You're making me nervous! You and Yanki both," she said peevishly.

  But Mrs. Moskowitz didn't move. "Why are all the police gone?" she said. "They've been outside the caf�inside the caf�upstairs, downstairs, for days looking for some sign of Sid Malone. And now I can't see one of them!"

  "Maybe they followed India. She left half an hour ago. To visit Joe Bristow."

  "Usually only one goes after her. It is very, very strange," she said, finally releasing the curtain. "Almost as if they do not wish to catch him anymore."

  "I doubt that," Ella said.

  "I wonder where he can be."

  "God only knows."

  No one had heard from Sid for more than a week. Poor India was absolutely beside herself, convinced he was suffering, injured and alone, in some abandoned warehouse or derelict wharf. Ella was suffering, too. For her friend. The whole family was. No one could bear to see India so unhappy, and everyone was chafing from being under constant observation by the police. It was not good for business. Nerves were strained and tempers were fraying.

  It was Saturday. The Sabbath. The restaurant was closed and the family was taking a well-deserved rest. Mr. Moskowitz was napping on the settee. Aaron was reading. The younger children were playing a game. As Ella tried to return her attention to a magazine, Yanki's voice rose, grew louder. He was in the dining room, but his voice carried out to the sitting room.

  "Ach!" Ella shouted. "Yanki! Genug!"

  Yanki sang louder.

  From downstairs the sound of knocking could be heard.

  "Another peaceful Sabbath at the Moskowitz residence," Ella sighed.

  "Go, Aaron, will you, please? See who it is," Mrs. Moskowitz said.

  Aaron trotted downstairs and was back up in the sitting room a few minutes later carrying a large, lumpy parcel wrapped in brown paper. "It was the postman. Here, Ella," he said.

  "What is it?" Mrs. Moskowitz asked.

  "I don't know," Ella said.

  "Did you send away for something?" Miriam asked.

  "No."

  "Who is it from?" Posy asked.

  "It doesn't say."

  "Open it already!" Solly said.

  Ella did. Under the paper was an old Gladstone bag. She opened that and cried out, "It's money!"

  Mr. Moskowitz opened one eye. "This has happened once before, no?"

  "No, Papa," Ella breathed. "It hasn't. Not like this. Look at it all!"

  She opened the bag wider so that her family could see the bundles of hundred-pound notes. When she did, she spotted a piece of paper that had slipped down between the stacks. She quickly pulled it out and opened it.

  "Blimey, El!" Aaron said, picking one up. "These are thick! There must be five thousand pounds in there!"

  "No, Aaron," Ella said, her voice shaking. "Five hundred thousand pounds."

  Mrs. Moskowitz, who had been standing over her, sat down on the floor with a thump, her hand pressed to her chest.

  Alarmed, Mr. Moskowitz got up from the settee, grabbed Ella's magazine, and fanned his wife with it. "Are you all right, Mama?" he asked. "Miriam! The brandy!"

  "Five hundred thousand?" she whispered.

  Ella nodded. "Yes. It says so right here. There's a note."

  Dear Ella,

  Here's � 500,000. Use it for the clinic. Use it to help the people of

  Whitechapel. The ones who have nothing and no one. Keep them

  alive. Keep a beautiful dream alive. Help a bad man do a good

  deed.

  There was no date. No signature. There didn't need to be. Ella knew who'd sent it.

  "Is that all it says? Where is he? What is he doing?" Mrs. Moskowitz asked, motioning for the note.

  Miriam brought brandy and a glass from the sideboard. Solly picked up a stack of notes, wide-eyed. Posy draped herself over Ella's back and clasped her arms around her neck. There was so much noise and commotion that no one noticed India standing in the hallway. In the shadows.

  "Was that the �Kaddish' that Yanki was singing?" she asked softly.

  She knew many Hebrew prayers now, from listening to Yanki and Mr. Moskowitz sing them.

  "India!" Ella cried. "Thank God you're here!"

  "It's a beautiful prayer, isn't it?" India said. "Beautiful and sad. I can't imagine he had any prayers at the end to comfort him. None at all."

  "India, never mind the prayer, look at this! Look! Five hundred thousand pounds! From
Sid. I know it. It must be. Who else could it be?" She held up her hands. "I know what you're thinking, but we're not going to send it back. We're just going to thank him."

  "We can't thank him, Ella."

  "Not yet, not yet. But soon. He will come soon."

  "No, he won't. Not soon. Not ever."

  "What are you saying? Haven't I told you not to talk that way? Why are you standing out there in the hallway? Come! Come and look at this."

  India walked into the sitting room.

  Ella gasped at the sight of her. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  India's eyes were red with crying and in them Ella saw the deepest despair.

  "I didn't know. It's been days and days and I didn't know. Not until I heard them. As I was coming down the hospital steps I heard them shouting it."

  "Heard who? Heard what?"

  "The newsboys," India said. "They were shouting it over and over again. They wouldn't stop." She held a copy of the Clarion out to Ella.

  "Malone Found!" its headline shrieked.

  "Where?" Ella asked, reaching for the paper.

  "In the Thames. He's dead, Ella. Sid Malone is dead."

  Chapter 76

  India stared at the door to Freddie Lytton's flat. He was at home. She could hear the gramophone playing. She raised her hand, then stood

  frozen, unable to knock.

  She pressed her hands over her eyes. She was quaking inside, sick to her very soul. There was no going back from what she was about to do. She almost left, almost ran down the stairs and into the night, but then she pictured a little child shunned by other children. She heard her--for somehow she knew it was a girl--asking what the word bastard meant. She saw her growing up alone, unable to attend the better schools, unable to make friends, unhappy.

  It was worth every sacrifice, her child's future. Hers and Sid's. It was all that mattered now. At the thought of Sid she crumpled and had to sit down on the staircase. For three days she had lain in her bed in the Moskowitzes' attic, unable to stop weeping, drowning in a grief that was black and bottomless. She had told herself she would never love again after Hugh, but she had. She had loved Sid Malone and she had lost him, too.

  She had wanted to die in those first hours, after she'd heard the newsboys shouting about his death, after reading how his body was pulled from the murky river, so badly decomposed that it had to be identified by a bullet hole and some personal effects. She wept for him, because he never had the chance to know a better life, and for herself, because she would never have the chance to live that life with him.

  She refused to eat anything, drink anything, until Ella had come to her on the second day and gently told her that if she did not eat, then the baby did not, either. India realized then that Sid was not completely gone. She still had some small part of him left, a tiny life growing inside her, and she must do everything she could to protect and nurture that life. She had decided then and there to go to Freddie.

  "It's the only way," she whispered to herself now. Then she stood up and knocked on his door.

  "Just a minute!" Freddie called. The music stopped abruptly. She heard footsteps, the door opened, and he was there, standing in the doorway.

  "India," he said acidly.

  "May I come in?"

  "Oh, you want to come in, do you? A few days ago you couldn't get away from me fast enough. You made a bloody fool of me. A laughingstock. So, no, you can't come in," he said, starting to shut the door.

  India blocked it with her foot. "I have a business proposition for you," she said. "It involves money. A great deal of it. Now may I come in?"

  Freddie opened the door. He swept a hand before him. When India was inside, he slammed the door.

  "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

  "I wish to marry you, Freddie."

  India noted that even as practised a fraud as Freddie couldn't keep the astonishment off his face.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said I wish to marry you. We can set a date tonight. I have paid a visit to my mother today and convinced her to enlarge upon the terms of the offer she originally made you. In addition, I secured five thousand pounds cash from her." India paused to take an envelope from her purse and place it on the table. She nodded at it. "It's yours tonight if you accept my proposal. Should come in handy, no? You've a by-election to win."

  Freddie stared at the envelope. He said nothing.

  "Speechless? That's quite unlike you."

  "This is a very sudden turn of events. I don't understand--"

  India cut him off. "I am pregnant, Freddie. And the father of my child is dead."

  Freddie laughed bitterly. "So I'm to raise Sid Malone's bastard, is that it?"

  "I do not wish my child to suffer the stigma of illegitimacy. If we marry, you must accept the child as your own and behave toward her at all times as a father. You are incapable of love, I realize that, so I will not ask that for her, merely civility and a modicum of kindness. Those are my terms. Here are my parents.' "

  She drew out another envelope. Freddie opened it and learned that he was still to receive Blackwood and the Berkeley Square town house, but the lump sum of �100,000 had been raised to �300,000 and the �20,000 per annum had been doubled.

  Freddie digested this, then said, "I have a few terms of my own. Number one: I want heirs."

  "I will do my best to give them to you."

  "Those heirs--my children--will inherit the Selwyn Jones estate."

  "I thought you would say that, so I've taken the precaution of asking my parents to establish an independent fund for this child. You will have no control over it. Only I will."

  Freddie laughed in disbelief. "They know about the baby? You told them?"

  "I had no choice. I need you to marry me. I thought a larger dowry would help to persuade you."

  "And they agreed?"

  "Of course. They would pay a great deal to avoid the scandal of a grandchild born out of wedlock."

  "Term number two: You are not to resume your medical work. Not at the clinic, not anywhere. You are to stay away from Whitechapel. From Ella Moskowitz, Harriet Hatcher, all of them. You're to become a proper MP's wife. Quiet, supportive, and firmly in the background."

  "Very well."

  "Term number three: We marry on the twenty-fourth. Two weeks from now. At Longmarsh."

  India's heart lurched. So soon, she thought.

  "Do I have your word on this, India?"

  "You do," she said. "Do I have yours, Freddie? Once, a long time ago, you were capable of giving it. Are you still?"

  "I give you my word."

  She nodded. "I will see you at Longmarsh on the twenty-fourth, then," she said, turning to go. She had to leave. She would go home, to her bed in the Moskowitzes' attic, to her grief, and try to find a way to live with what she'd just done.

  Freddie grabbed her arm. "Wait," he said.

  She looked at him questioningly.

  "All this, India... all this because of a bloody criminal. I don't understand."

  India, doomed and heartbroken, smiled at him. "No, you don't," she said. "You couldn't, Freddie. It's called love."

  Chapter 77

  Fiona's baby kicked. His movements were getting stronger. She had begun to think of the baby as a he. It had to be. He had restless legs like her brothers. She rested her hand on her large belly and continued to stare out of her bedroom window.

  The gray morning light accentuated the shadows under her eyes, and the worry in them. "Think happy thoughts, Mrs. Bristow," the nurse had told her on her last visit to Dr. Hatcher, more than a month ago. "Happy thoughts are good for the baby."

  It had been easier to think happy thoughts then. Her husband had not been lying comatose in a hospital. Charlie hadn't had a price on his head. Seamie had not yet told her about Antarctica.

  "Will you know your uncles, little one?" she whispered softly. Her eyes filled with tears. "Will you know your father?" She blinked them away, knowing that if she s
tarted to cry now, she wouldn't be able to stop.

  Lipton and Twining were dozing at the bottom of her bed. Lipton picked up his head at the sound of her voice. Sarah had brought her tea and toast, but she hadn't been able to touch a bite. She'd dressed herself, but couldn't muster the energy to leave her room. She felt sick with worry.