“You been bad boys,” Willow said. “Mother’s gonna spank you.”
“Up.” Frost’s pistol made the motion to Keen. “And out, easy as you please.”
As they were herded toward the door Matthew looked over at Albion, but if the cloaked figure really was the golden-masked avenger he simply seemed to be ordering an ale from the keep. He had not yet lowered his hood; Matthew couldn’t even see the man’s hair color.
On an impulse, as they reached the door, Matthew called out, “Steven!”
The keep and several of the patrons looked up. The cloaked figure did not turn from his position at the bar.
“Go on,” Frost commanded, sounding terribly out-of-breath.
When they were in Flint Alley and walking toward the steps, avoiding the two men sprawled on the ground, Frost gave three deep coughs followed by a ghastly wheeze. He placed the barrel of his gun against the back of Keen’s head. “Damn it!” he croaked. “Tell ’em, Willow!”
“This is how it is,” said the second gunman. “Mother wants you alive, Corbett. You make a move we don’t like and ol’ Rory gets it in the brainpan. Keen, you try to run and you get it in the brainpan. Either way, you get it. Got it?”
“Seems to me I’ll get it in the fuckin’ brainpan either here or there, so what’s the difference?”
“The difference is that—Christ, I can’t breathe. The fucker and that chair. Should’a kicked his head in.” He gasped for air, a painful sound. “Tell ’im the difference, Willow.”
“You can live to see tomorrow if you play nice,” said Willow. “Would you rather lose your life or your left hand? You’re gonna lose one or the other for sure. Your choice.”
Matthew knew they had thrown Rory a bone of hope, but he also knew Mother Deare and the nature of Fell’s people. What Willow wasn’t saying is that they would start with the left hand. Likely use a redhot iron to sear the stump, make him live that much longer. Sometime around six in the morning they would be getting to the footless legs.
They climbed the steps out of Flint Alley.
“To the right,” Frost told them. They walked into the wafting wall of fog.
“Just go easy,” Willow cautioned.
Was there any other way? Matthew had a brief impulse to just run for it, but Frost’s bullet would surely go into Keen’s skull as soon as he tried, and he figured Willow wouldn’t shoot to kill but wherever the ball went into his own body, it would be an agonizing night. Still, Mother Deare was not going to be gentle, even after venting her rage and cutting Rory to pieces. However one looked at this picture, it was not pretty.
A few paces onward and Frost had to stop for a coughing fit. He lowered his gun from Keen’s head and doubled over but instantly Willow’s pistol took its place. Frost coughed violently for perhaps eight seconds, spat red on the stones and then coughed some more. “Ahhhhh, shit!” Frost said when he could get hold of his voice again. “That bastard…fouled my chest, Willow.”
“I think you need a doctor,” said Keen. It was the wrong thing to say because suddenly Frost was up in his face with a savage, twisted expression that could only signify impending carnage. By the lanternlight, Matthew could see that Frost’s lips were flecked with blood. Two pistols pressed against Rory’s head.
“Ought to kill you right here and now, you low traitorous…tell him!” Frost wheezed.
“You low traitorous sonofabitch!” said Willow, ably conveying the sentiment with his own twisted mouth.
“Move,” Frost commanded.
Matthew and Rory moved on, at the point of the pistols.
And here Matthew wished that from any of the fog-shrouded doorways would lurch a beggar, a prostitute or some other creature of the night, and in so doing might afford a chance to disrupt this caravan of the doomed. Matthew thought he could get hold of Frost’s gun-hand, if Rory could take care of Willow. But as they walked on no such thing happened, and even when a pair of drunks stumbled past from the opposite direction they went by as peacefully as doves.
Frost had to stop to cough and wheeze again, and Matthew thought that now was the time but the gun against the back of Rory’s head turned his resolve into a fleeting idea of misguided heroics. They continued on when Frost’s fit had passed. Matthew began to wonder how he might talk Mother Deare down from her pinnacle of revenge, but though he might survive the night in one broken form or another he was sure his friend’s every step led nearer the grave.
The light of an approaching lantern glinted through the fog ahead. A figure was coming closer.
“Keep goin’!” Frost said, his voice nearly gone.
Matthew heard the sound of drunken laughter and a slurred voice. The man approaching them staggered from side to side. He was talking and laughing to himself, and now he was almost upon them and Matthew thought if he grabbed the man and threw him into Frost, what would be the outcome?
He suddenly realized the figure wore a hooded cloak.
“Pardon, pardon, pardon,” the man said, the voice muffled as he stumbled toward Frost, and Frost let out a curse and lifted the lantern and there in the hood was the golden mask of Albion, who without further hesitation smashed Frost in the face with his lantern and was already drawing his saber from beneath the ebony cloak.
Many things happened in a rapid succession and a blur of motion.
Frost gave a cry, his face bloodied, and fell backward. Matthew swung for Willow’s head but missed because the man had already moved. Willow’s pistol was coming up to fire at Albion. Rory backpedalled, fearful of the saber and what he thought was a mad killer. Willow’s gun went off with a crack and a billow of smoke, but the hand holding it was already half-cleaved from the wrist by Albion’s blade and the ball ricocheted off the paving. Albion followed the first cut with a slash across Willow’s eyes and as the man’s head tilted up the next swordswing caught him squarely across the throat. He spun past Rory like a bloody pinwheel.
Another shot rang out and more smoke puffed. Matthew heard Albion give a grunt and a gloved hand went to his left side low on the body. Frost was on the ground, his back to a wall and blood in his eyes but his pistol’s eye had targeted well enough. Matthew kicked the gun from Frost’s hand though by now it was merely a club; then he was shoved aside by the surprising strength of Albion, who brought his saber down upon Frost’s head like the judgment of God. The blade crushed Frost’s tricorn through his skull into his brain, and gray matter streamed over the man’s ears as if a bowl of moldy oatmeal had been poured on his head.
Albion pulled at the saber to free it, but the blade had gone deep and the avenger’s strength appeared to be quickly ebbing. Voices shouted through the fog. The sound of one shot going off may have been a drunken accident; two shots was a bloodletting. Albion let go of the sword. The golden mask turned toward Matthew and hesitated only a second. Then Albion staggered, still holding his wound, and ran away into the fog from whence he had come.
The voices were getting closer. Matthew saw that Willow’s lantern had been shattered but Frost’s was lying intact and still lit. He picked up the survivor, put his foot against Frost’s mushy skull and yanked the saber free. Then he said to Rory, “Come on!” He had to give Rory’s arm a jerk to bring him back to the moment. “Follow me!” he said, and took off running in the direction Albion had gone. He didn’t look back to see if Rory was coming or not; time was of the essence.
He began to see the scrawls of blood on the ground. A half-block ahead, the blood showed that Albion had crossed the street. Matthew followed and picked the trail up a few yards onward.
Not much further, the blood trail turned into the doorway of a money-lender’s shop.
There, on the ground with his back against the door and his knees pulled up toward his chest, was Albion. He was breathing raggedly, but breathing. The mask had gone crooked in the confines of the hood.
“He’s hurt bad,” said Rory from right behind Matthew, which made Matthew nearly jump out of his skin.
“Hold thi
s.” Matthew gave him the bloody saber, and never was a sword more reluctantly received.
Matthew knelt down. He saw that the eyes in the slits of the mask were closed. The wound was bleeding profusely through the gloved fingers.
He reached out, under the man’s chin, found the bottom edge of the mask—shiny gold-colored fabric, the ‘beard’ a tooled piece of gold-painted leather—and lifted it.
Before him was the face of Albion.
Before him was the face of Judge William Atherton Archer.
“You know him?” Rory asked, for Matthew had given a startled jerk.
“Yes,” Matthew managed to reply, though still stunned. All that blood…the ball had hit something vital. “We’ve got to get him to a doctor,” Matthew said. “Somewhere.” He looked up at Rory. “Where?”
“I don’t know, I can’t—wait…wait. The Cable Street hospital. It ain’t too far…couple a’blocks.”
Archer’s eyes fluttered and opened. The bloodshot orbs stared up at Matthew, who slipped the mask off the man’s head and put it away in his cloak.
“We’re going to take you to the hospital on Cable Street,” Matthew said. “Can you hear me?”
Archer tried to speak but could not. He nodded. A little trickle of blood ran from a corner of his mouth.
“Let’s get him on his feet,” Matthew said. And as Rory helped him pull the wounded Albion up, Matthew hoped they could get this man to the hospital before the life departed from him, because then forever would depart the mystery of why a respected and upright justice of the Old Bailey would transform himself into a masked and nearly maniacal killer.
They set off into the fog, as the ghosts of London silently kept their watch.
Twenty-Five
THE tall, distinguished-looking but very weary surgeon on duty came along the hallway into the small lantern-lit room where Matthew and Rory sat on a bench next to the high-topped desk of the admissions nurse. He had just removed his blood-smeared green apron outside the operating chamber. He wore white stockings, brown breeches and a yellowed shirt that used to be white. His sleeves were rolled up. His hands had been freshly scrubbed of blood yet some traces of it always stubbornly remained beneath his fingernails as a reminder of his work.
He ignored the hollow-eyed woman whose husband had been brought in with a knife wound to the right shoulder, for the man was out of danger, and likewise he ignored the two ragged wretches who had carried a third in after their companion had gone into a Velvet-charged rage and attacked a brick wall, shattering the bones of both his fists; that man, too, would survive and the leather straps on his bed would keep him secure after the knockout recipe of laudanum, belladonna and whiskey wore off.
The surgeon strode directly across planks stained with the blood of countless victims of Whitechapel violence. He and the other three doctors who volunteered their services here had seen everything from axes still sticking in the heads of living people to faces obliterated by malicious vials of flesh-burning acid. But never—never—had he expected to see what he had first seen two hours ago, when the nurses wheeled the body of a gunshot victim back to the operating chamber and called him from his treatment of the knife wound.
“Gentlemen,” he said, stopping before Matthew and Rory. These were the two Mrs. Darrimore had said brought the body in. “I’m Dr. Robert Hardy. You are?”
They introduced themselves. Matthew noted that Rory called himself “Mister Rory Keen”.
“Fine. Now tell me why in the name of God William Atherton Archer is lying gutshot and near to death in this hospital.”
It had been a gruelling and desperate journey from where they’d found Albion to the entrance of the Cable Street Publick Hospital; gruelling because Albion’s legs had given out soon after they’d begun and they’d had to carry a dead weight, and desperate because it was certain he would soon be simply dead if they didn’t hurry. Matthew had told Rory to ditch the saber and so the saber had been ditched, in a sewage ditch that ran along the street. When they’d gotten the wounded man into the hospital, Matthew saw that his face was slack and pallid from loss of blood. The nurses had quickly set Archer upon a small wheeled carriage, torn his shirt away to expose the wound, and rushed him back to the operating chamber; they had been silently efficient except to ask the question of how many times the victim had been shot in case they’d missed a second and third wounds, and the question posed to Matthew and Rory asking if either one of them had been the shooter. Matthew figured that there had to be a weapon or two behind that nurses’ desk, and the sturdy women here would know how to use such since violence here was obviously a daily—and particularly nightly—matter.
“Speak,” said Dr. Hardy.
Matthew did. “Sir, how is it you know Judge Archer?”
“He has a history here. Judge Archer has been influential in aiding this hospital. Now that I’ve answered you, return the request: how did he come to be shot? And what in God’s name is he doing in Whitechapel at this time of night?”
Matthew could feel Albion’s mask in the pocket of his cloak, which lay across his lap. He realized that anything he said now could lead to dire consequences, and without the proper answers from Archer the wisest course was to say, “You’ll have to ask the judge when he awakens.”
“If he awakens,” the doctor replied. “Shall I send for a constable to shake the information out of you?”
Rory laughed. “That ain’t gonna happen, doc! You’d find the flippin’ Queen in Whitechapel ’fore you’d find a constable, and you know it.”
Hardy cast a withering glare at Rory, and then his eagle eyes found the tattoos on both their bloody hands. “You’re Black-Eyed Broodies, I see. That’s highly ironic.”
“Why is that?” Matthew asked.
“It was one of yours who caused the death of Judge Archer’s wife, as you must already know.”
All of Matthew’s senses immediately went on the alert. “His wife?” He caught himself and asked in a steadier voice, “No, I didn’t know that. How did it come about?”
Hardy stared at him in silence for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re not a Broodie. You’ve got the mark, yes, but…” His eyes narrowed. “You say your name is Matthew Corbett?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard that name mentioned recently…somewhere.”
The Monster of Plymouth strikes again, Matthew thought uneasily. He figured at least one of the nurses and possibly a physician or two here were readers of the Pin. Even so, he had no choice but to forge ahead. “Sir, I’d like to hear what happened to Judge Archer’s wife.”
“Why? What’s that to you?”
“Doc,” Rory said with a bit of heat in his face and voice, “we brung the gent in, didn’t we? We could’a left him on the street to bleed to death. We been sittin’ here for the like a’ two hours, waitin’ to hear what state he’s in. Don’t that count for nothin’?”
“It makes me wonder why all the more.”
“You say a Broodie killed his missus? That right?”
“I didn’t say killed,” Hardy corrected. “I said, caused her death.”
“Ain’t that the same?”
Hardy turned his attention to Matthew again. “His wife—Helen by name—was a great asset to this hospital. She volunteered her time and services at every opportunity, and ours was not the only institution she favored. One day she arrived in her carriage to perform her volunteer work and she was struck down in the street by a falling body.”
Matthew’s mouth had gone dry. He thought he felt the flesh of his face tighten.
“Don’t you know this?” Hardy probed. “How long have you been running with these children who think themselves so grown-up?”
“Josh Oakley,” Rory said, in what was nearly a stunned exhalation of breath.
“That was his name,” Hardy went on. “We found it out from a tavern keep. The tattoo on his hand further identified him as one of your odious tribe. We also learned from others in the neighborhood that h
e was addicted to and likely made insane by the White Velvet, which is not only the scourge of Whitechapel but a damned blight upon this entire city.”
“Go on,” said Matthew. “About Helen Archer. She didn’t die in the street?”
“Thank God, no. I say that, but…it might have been better if she had died there. No…she was brought into the hospital with a broken neck, a broken back, and severe internal injuries. We considered transferring her to a better-equipped facility but she was in tremendous pain and begged not to be moved, and…in truth…no other facility could have done any better for her.” Hardy’s eyes were cold. “Does it give you some measure of pride, hearing this?”
“No pride,” Matthew answered. “Sorrow for one and all.”
“A little late for that, young man. Helen lingered here for nearly two weeks. In time the pain-killing concoctions we prepared for her lost their power and so we had to keep her sleeping. Mercifully—for one and all,” he said with dripping sarcasm, “she passed away in her sleep. Now Judge Archer shows up here, after midnight, with a gunshot wound that may yet kill him? What’s the game?”
“I’m not sure,” Matthew said, partly to himself. “But whatever it is, it’s deadly.”
“I believe you two should leave,” said the doctor. “This room is hard enough to keep clean as it is.”
“We don’t have to sit here and be fuckin’ insulted.” Rory rose indignantly to his feet. “Come on, Matthew, let’s scrape this shit off our shoes.” He took two steps toward the door and then stopped when he realized his brother Broodie was still sitting. “Come on, we’re not wanted here!”
“You go ahead.”
“What? You’re gonna stay here and take this?”
“Yes,” said Matthew.
“I want you out,” Hardy told him.
Matthew looked the doctor in the face. “You’ll have to throw me out. I intend to stay here in case Judge Archer wakes up.”
“He won’t. Not for many hours, if indeed he wakes up at all.”
“Then for many hours I’ll be right here.”
Freedom of the Mask Page 32