by Jess Kidd
He puts his fork down slowly and gets up from his swan pie.
‘Now, Mrs Devine,’ he coos. ‘Let’s not be too hasty.’
‘You,’ says Bridie Devine, pointing directly at him so that he’s in no doubt, ‘are a liar, sir.’
Her women agree; they nod their heads unanimously. The python around Euryale’s neck nods too, rhythmically.
‘How was I to know she was your child? She wasn’t exactly the poppet you showed me in the picture.’
‘She was the girl in Bridie’s picture, Lester,’ corrects Euryale. ‘Although more grown, I’ll give you that.’
‘You’ll give me that?’ Lufkin reddens. ‘You are a traitor, madam. I ought to divorce you.’ He turns to his guards. ‘Too Anne of Cleves: indifferent, thick ankles.’
The guards make consoling noises.
Cora nudges Bridie. ‘Will I shake him now? See if the truth drops out?’
Lufkin startles. ‘Mrs Devine, we have a difference of opinion. If I inadvertently bought your stolen girl, then I’m sorry.’
The guards mumble their support. How could he know?
‘It’s a calamity. Here I am, with the grand opening upon me, and my main bloody attraction is delivered deceased.’ He shakes his head. ‘And not only deceased, but rotten, with a smell that would lift off your head.’
A few courtiers grimace.
‘He couldn’t even trot her out as a stiff,’ concurs Lufkin’s guard. ‘And then the snails were hardly pleasant.’
‘That’s why he sold her so quick,’ appends the other guard, helpfully. ‘Knock-down.’
‘They don’t need the bleeding’ ins and outs,’ Lufkin flares. He addresses Bridie. ‘Pity me, madam. I’m left with the rat-eating woman, the second-rate mind reader, or the boy with the extra toe as the headlining act.’
‘We’ve still got the penguins, sir,’ reminds the guard. ‘They’re very appealing.’
Lufkin looks up to the heavens.
‘You’re not off the hook, Lufkin,’ says Bridie. ‘I’ve been collecting some information about your affairs.’
Cora and Euryale smile at each other.
Lufkin nods, he quite understands. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘The name of the collector you sold the child’s body to.’
‘The deal was made with the utmost anonymity. No names were exchanged, Mrs Devine.’
‘Then I’m off to visit Inspector Rose.’
‘Large-headed cove, likes a sneer, not wonderfully tall,’ Lufkin says.
‘Kemp?’
‘If you say so.’ With an expression partway between a squint and a smoulder, he adds, ‘Luncheon with me, Bridie Devine?’
Bridie Devine throws Lester Lufkin a look of distilled scorn and strides out of the tent.
The courtiers muzzle smiles.
Lufkin’s heart is aflame.
Chapter 38
London has never seen rain like it. And now, all over the city the streets run with water, this foul, grey-foamed downpour. As if God has emptied his wash-tub after boiling Satan’s inexpressibles in it.
A fell wind blows in from the coast, bringing news of the havoc it’s caused: turbulent seas and shipwrecks. The Thames picks up pace, rising again; she sweeps along with such ferocity that mud-larks don’t dare step off the bank and watermen suck air in through their teeth and shake their heads. The river has never been so angry. They will not set foot on water that lashes and boils in temper.
And above London, the sky keeps getting darker.
Bridie and Myrtle stand in the shrubbery in Cavendish Square. The branches keep some of the weather off. Bridie likes hearing the rain patter on the leaves and the rising earth smell. Myrtle likes the puddle mud; her stockings are speckled with it. Bridie has on her disguise, of course. An old ribbon seller, hen-stepping in her too-tight pinching clogs, blinking behind spectacles under the rim of her too-big bonnet.
She has a jar of toffee in her basket.
Myrtle takes a piece and another for Rosebud.
‘Isn’t Rosebud smart in her new veil?’ says Bridie. ‘Will we get her face fixed?’
Myrtle considers this. She adjusts the scrap of lace on Rosebud’s bonnet and pushes an exploratory finger into the doll’s broken eye. Then she tips her upside down and inspects her pantalettes.
‘No, we’ll keep her as she is,’ she says.
‘Grand, so.’
Myrtle cradles Rosebud in her arms. ‘She’s home,’ she confides. ‘But she’s sick.’
Bridie’s heart turns sideways. ‘Who’s home?’
‘Christabel,’ whispers Myrtle. ‘Only that’s not her name now.’
‘What is her name?’
Myrtle rolls her eyes. ‘Sibéal.’
Bridie looks up at the house.
‘Would you like to come and say how-do-you-do?’ asks Myrtle.
The small girl leads the old ribbon seller through the servants’ door, past the kitchen and up the back stairs. It is a good time of day for an adventure like this. The nurse is having her nap, the butler is at the book-keepers and the cook is soaking her corns.
Dr Eames is at the hospital and it’s not the day for Mr Kemp to visit.
Myrtle doesn’t like Mr Kemp. He does card tricks that aren’t funny and has silent footsteps and is good at sneaking up on people.
Myrtle walks Rosebud up and down the corridor. They play at sentries while Bridie tackles the lock. She is applying the skeleton key she found at Mrs Peach’s.
By the time Rosebud has made two turns of the landing, Bridie has the lock picked.
There is a mineral sharpness to the air and the powerful smell of sun-heated seaweed. Myrtle, marching outside the door now, warned her about this, but Bridie doesn’t find it unpleasant. The window is hung with blue gauze; through the gap in the curtain Bridie can see that the window is barred. Snails slick in thick clusters over the glass. The blue-painted walls run with moisture.
There is little in the room but a bed and a chair. A few collected objects are carefully ranged along the mantelpiece, a button and so forth. On the bed sits a child wearing a white dress. She has her back to the door and is propped up with bolsters and cushions, her legs covered with a blanket. She has healing sores on her ear and on her neck, a shallow bowl of water on her lap.
Bridie moves forward and the child looks round. Eyes grey-white marble and then the expanding black of darkening, widening, oddly flat pupils. A trick of the muted light?
She smiles, the child. An awkward, close-lipped affair, not unlike Bridie’s own new smile. Her fine white hair has a marine cast from the blue at the window. Her face is lovely, an uncanny kind of loveliness, a strange flawless symmetry. Apart from the lopsided ribbon-bow over one ear, which Bridie recognises as Myrtle’s handiwork. Here is the child in Bridie’s photograph, only grown. Fragile of build, her prominent spine just visible beneath the thin stuff of her dress.
Bridie takes the chair next to the bed, moving slowly. Sibéal returns to her bowl. Dipping her fingertips, dabbling and splashing. Bridie watches, riveted. Sibéal hooks a drop with her finger, and another, and another. She cups them in her other palm.
Bridie loses herself, drop by drop; the memories ripple into clear views.
A small woman rescues a daisy chain from a little boy’s unthinking fingers and hangs it proudly on her cap, her hazel eyes warm with laughter.
A girl slips on wet wood, under a table, in a tavern, after a cat.
Wet wood on the yawing deck of a steam-packet in a storm.
The child tips her palm and watches the drops roll away.
The past floods in and with it the urge to embrace this creature. And the pity of it stills Bridiel this little one, like her own young self, cast adrift.
Chapter 39
Bridie sits in her parlour in Denmark Street staring at the wall. There is nothing much to see, other than faded wallpaper of an indistinct design, likely urns or fountains, definitely wreaths. But that’s not the point; Bridie’s
attention is not on the wall. Cora is in the parlour too, scattering spent tea-leaves on the rug and then going at them with haphazard stabs of her long-handled broom. When Cora scatters the tea-leaves she hums; when she sweeps, she whistles through her teeth. The rug looks no cleaner, but that’s not the point; Cora’s attention is not on the rug.
Bridie has been ruminating for hours, possibly all night. Cora found her at first light and she hasn’t stirred since, for the pipe in her hand is unfilled and the coffee at her elbow is still untasted.
Cora edges nearer, catching sight of a book forgotten in the folds of Bridie’s skirt: On the Manifold Wonders of Fresh and Salt Water Creatures: A Scientific Observation by Rev. Thomas Winter.
‘A middling to interesting read,’ says Cora. ‘I must say the section on sandworms failed to entertain me.’
Cora imagines she sees a flicker of response on Bridie’s face, the beginnings of a blink, the slightest dilation of a nostril.
Cora leans in closer. ‘A thrilling history of the private lives of whelks, though.’
Bridie blinks, sighs, and is back in the room. ‘How do I even begin to get her out?’
‘From under his nose: difficult, I would say.’
‘And if I do get her out, what in God’s name do I do with her?’
‘Take her to Mrs Prudhoe, she can stay with the other waifs.’
‘She could be a killer.’
‘Then release her into the sea.’
‘Cora, she could be a killer.’
Cora points to the Reverend Winter’s book. ‘So you believe in this now. Merrow and suchlike?’
Bridie says nothing.
‘Let her stay with a collector then. You know, an expert who can manage her.’ Cora makes a few stabs with her broom, watching Bridie from the corner of her eye.
‘Jesus, Cora, how do you think he’ll manage her? A malignant bastard like Gideon Eames?’ Bridie takes up her pipe with a frown. ‘Just bloody let me get Sibéal out first, then I’ll decide what to do with her.’
Cora grins and sweeps up with a deft clatter of broom and pan.
Bridie goes from staring at the walls to pacing between them.
Ruby stands in the fireplace out of her way, hatless and persevering. ‘So, the drowning in air and burning bites, you’ll be taking account of that in your plan?’
‘She didn’t drown or bite me, did she?’
Ruby lowers his voice. ‘Is she still in your mind? Dredging memories?’
‘It wasn’t like that. Jesus, I regret telling you anything.’
‘And you didn’t remember me at all, even when she stirred up your recollections a bit?’
‘Didn’t I tell you—’
‘She might be listening to us now.’
‘And she would hear you, Ruby?’
He grins. ‘She’s a miraculous creature, is she not? Just like myself.’
Bridie groans and begins to pace the floor again.
‘Would there be guards at the house, Bridie?’
‘I don’t know, but there’ll be a rake of servants to get past. The nurse alone is a wardrobe of a woman.’
‘What about Eames?’ Ruby looks at her closely. ‘Are you planning to get past him too?’
Bridie hesitates. ‘I’ll strike when he’s out.’
Cora sails back into the room. ‘Caller for you: would Mrs Devine be at home to Master Jem, crossing-sweeper?’
‘She would.’
Cora exhales. ‘He won’t come in without his broom.’
‘Then his broom is welcome too.’
Master Jem, wearing his bright neckerchief, modified wide-awake and an expression of great alertness, inspects the unfathomable instrument on the mantelpiece, tapping the gauge and peering at the rubber attachment.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
‘No idea,’ admits Bridie.
Cora brings in a tray with the requisite refreshments for a child of poverty: three meat pies and a half-pint of stout.
Jem props his broom carefully (being his livelihood and all) by the side of the fireplace, eyeing the giant housemaid with awe. Until, remembering his manners, he dips a bow.
‘Much obliged, Your Highness.’
Cora gives him a stately nod.
‘You have news for me, Jem?’
‘The doctor is doing a flit, Mrs Devine. Leaving for Windsor, he is.’
‘Albery Hall?’
‘That’s the one,’ agrees Jem.
‘Gideon Eames’s childhood home?’ asks Cora.
‘The same,’ says Bridie.
‘Then we will give chase,’ proposes Cora. ‘Ambush them. If that doesn’t work we break into the house and steal back Christabel—’
‘Sibéal.’
‘Exactly . . . and Myrtle Harbin,’ adds Cora. ‘We can’t leave her in Eames’s clutches either.’
‘Cora, the dangers, I can’t ask you to—’
‘I want to help save those children.’ Cora straightens her mob cap and draws herself up to her full stunning height. ‘You might need a big hand.’
Jem’s eyes widen.
‘They’ll likely have a few hard-headed men around, pistols even,’ ventures Bridie.
‘And you have your pepper-box and I have this . . .’ Cora selects an implement from the fireside companion stand. ‘Poker.’
Jem gazes at the giantess in admiration.
Cora tests the heft of her weapon. ‘Now all we need are a few fast horses.’
Bridie checks her pistol as she waits in her parlour. She can hear the sound of hooves outside. It is Cora, riding down Denmark Street in a phaeton with a sprightly pair. Cora brings the carriage to a bumpy halt outside Mr Wilks’s window. She taps on it with her crop. The old man puts down a clevis bolt and flutters to the window. He squints outside but sees naught, not even a seven-foot-tall housemaid.
‘Jem,’ says Bridie to the crossing-sweeper standing before her. ‘As much as I appreciate you volunteering for this affray, I have another job for you.’
Jem glances up from the pistol in her hand with a disappointed expression. ‘Mrs Devine?’
‘A job of utmost importance.’
His face brightens.
‘If this should go wrong, Jem—’
Cora hollers up from the road below.
‘—and something tells me that it might,’ continues Bridie, stoutly, ‘we will need reinforcements.’
She sits down at her bureau and dashes off a note. She hands it to Jem. ‘Take this to Inspector Valentine Rose, Scotland Yard.’
Jem looks doubtful. ‘A copper, ma’am?’
‘A good one.’ Bridie straightens the grubby flower in the boy’s buttonhole. ‘He’ll bring you with him if he sees fit.’
The boy brightens. He bobs off with the note.
‘Are you ready, Bridie?’ asks Ruby.
‘I am. It’s just . . . him.’
‘I’ll be there with you. And you have that.’ Ruby eyes the pistol. ‘Use it if you need to.’
She nods and is out the door, dagger strapped to her thigh, pepper-box in her pocket and perhaps a little something in her boot heels.
Chapter 40
A raven lands next to you. She fixes you with her eye, an eye as black as pooled tar, and stalks nearer. She nudges you with her beak and lets out a soft chirrup. She wants you to follow her, to see what she sees. If you’re ready – she pushes off into the air.
Maybe she’s one of Prudhoe’s flock, maybe not; either way, borrow the raven’s sharp eye, which penetrates any fog, London or otherwise.
Hers is a world of roofs and chimney-stacks, steeples and trees, and the shining serpent of the river running through it all. The early bustle of London below. People are no more than punctuation from above! Hat tops . . . full stops. The dash – of a running dog.
And all around you: sky. The raven turns in her element and the world turns too, confirming what she already knew: she is the centre of everything.
She lands on a gutter and shakes her out feath
ers. Below, two broughams are being readied in Cavendish Square. The horses twitch their ears and the footmen check the doors. The coachmen are sombre, sinking into their cloaks, reins in hand. The carriages draw off, close by one another, as if for protection, blinds drawn down. Bridles jangling, more jittery than jaunty, the horses know something is afoot. The footmen pull up their mufflers and keep wary. They predict an ambush at every jolt.
The road from London to Windsor is good and the carriages are new and the horses strong and fresh. But if the footmen looked behind (on a straight road, with the aid of a field-glass) they would see a robbed phaeton following. In the driver’s seat: a seven-foot-tall housemaid with a resolute expression. Beside her sits a small, handsome woman in a widow’s cap and ugly bonnet. In the back of the phaeton stands a partially clad dead man, hatless and with eyes burning. The ride is thrilling; after all, the driver learnt her skills at the circus. But her living passenger pays no mind to this. She is watching the raven circling above, paying notice to every dip and tilt of the black flags of the bird’s wings, as if reading some dark portent.
Today Windsor is laid out in all her perfection. The air is apple-sweet and clear, with not even a wisp of fog in sight. Here is the venerable old town, with its comfortable taverns and comfortable residents. The hilltop castle, the warm-stoned ancient churches and pleasant villages. The great park where Herne the Hunter trips in dappled shade, as the leaves, those bright jewels of autumn, tremble and fall in the cleanest of breezes. Old Father Thames winds through this favoured landscape at his most stately and benign.
Albery Hall has an enviable aspect; located out past the town in a wooded part, it enjoys privacy and a sylvan surrounding, enclosed on three sides by a brick wall and on the fourth by the river. From the tree-lined approach it can instantly be seen that this is a glorious house. Its stone façade lit to honeyed cream on this autumn afternoon. This is the house of Bridie’s memories, with its even-eyed windows and a well-proportioned portico.
The coaches sweep past the gates and along the driveway, the first stopping at the front door, the second continuing round to the coach-house. The gates are locked immediately behind them. A tall man steps from the carriage in the full flush of vital midlife, smiling beneficently. His hat in his hand, his hair thick and long and combed back from his crown. He wears the fine golden beard of an ancient god, shot through with grey now, which only lends distinction and an aura of wisdom. He has brief words with the butler, the housekeeper, nods to the servants collected outside the front door, and enters the house. An unfavourable-looking young man follows, large-headed, slight of stature and with a mouth made for sneering. He holds a child by the hand. The child, clasping a doll, breaks loose from his grip and skips up the steps and into the big house, the line of servants bobbing and bowing as she goes.