“Tea time,” I cursed. My busiest time of day and short staffed. Jane was a properly married woman now and wouldn’t return to work, though I suspected her young husband had little income as a barrister yet and they could use the cash she’d earn. The new girls couldn’t yet be trusted working out front and Emily knew only a few recipes, though she showed quite a talent for baking. This morning she and I had started making bread and pastries before the sun came up. We should be well stocked for the day. She could fill in with sugar buns, and jam biscuits if things got too busy. That would free Emily to help Lucy maintain order out front. And Mickey was proving a dab hand at grinding and brewing the coffee beans. The few orders for tea Lucy could handle well.
Nothing for it. “Mickey, where on the docks?”
“Where no lady ought’nt to go. No nobs neither, with or without a carriage and stout footmen.”
“Typical. A place where beggars walk with impunity but civilized folk can’t.” I wondered if the Rom could explore there and be overlooked or run off like everywhere else. Prejudice knew no boundaries or class lines.
“What you goin’ t’ do?” Mickey asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.
“What I should have done days ago. I’m going to ask direct questions of the one person I know is involved in more than one side of whatever conspiracy surrounds us.” Decisively, I withdrew to my private parlor.
Mickey followed me. “Remember last time you run off on your own? I’m going with you.”
“I need you here to protect the girls.” I proceeded into my more private bedroom and closed the door, only to find Mickey’s foot in the way. His boots were still a bit big for him, so even if I slammed the door, I’d likely only hurt the leather, not his toes.
“Protect them from what? You taught us all how to kick and scream and scratch where it’d do most good. Now if I had a pistol and knife and some of those little metal stars, I could do a proper job beating off robbers and such.” He was careful to speak properly now that he needed to argue with me.
I couldn’t think of a single thing that would keep the boy here, safe. I’d grown to depend on him too much. Maybe I should have cut him off and left him feral rather than bring him inside as my own apprentice, where he’d become a target for anyone out to hurt me.
“Two’s safer than one. You always taught us that when I was running the streets with the rest of your crew. Three’s better so’s one can run for help—meaning you. But what if you’s the one needin’ help? Inspector Witherspoon would come with me, but I don’t always know how to find him quick. I’m going after Kit Doyle. Don’t you go nowheres without us.” He stomped out of my quarters and back down to the café.
He acted like we all owned each other. That’s not how my life was supposed to work.
I’d best hurry if I wanted to slip away while Mickey sought his companions.
What was this? Emily had tied my laces in the back in a complex knot I couldn’t hope to unravel myself; not without time and a sharp pick to loosen the knots. I stamped my foot in frustration, ready to cut the cords with my embroidery scissors.
“Mickey says you might need some help,” Lucy said from the doorway that Mickey had left open.
“He does, does he?” I fumed as I tore at the knot and only made it worse. Did the girls know I’d need to leave abruptly in the middle of the day so they conspired to keep me home long enough to summon reinforcements?
“Mickey also said not to let you leave until he returns even if we have to tie you up. I doubt it will take that to make you see the sense of exploring the docks with silent companions who slink from shadow to shadow and don’t appear to be with you.” She applied nimble fingers to the massive knot and had it unraveled in only a few breaths.
“I deal with enough conspiracies in London’s shadows. I don’t need my own apprentices and helpers forming another.” My wardrobe revealed only clean and ordinary day gowns. “Where are my . . . ?”
“Hidden in the back of the upper shelf behind your bonnet boxes. Right where you left them.”
“I used to like living on my own with only Violet to help.”
“And she didn’t help much, a little here, a little there, never finishing anything because you gave her too much to do, taking care of you and running the café as well. Good that you’ve hired more help if you intend to spend so much time investigating ‘London’s shadows.’” She hung back while I reached down the noisome pile in the back corner of the top shelf. I could easily stretch to pull them down. She’d need a stool or small ladder to even see the shelf, let alone the back of it.
“You’ve been afraid that you’d grow to love us and you’d lose us, like Jane running off to get married. I saw how you worried over her until she got back, then you dismissed her as if she’d never belonged here,” Lucy grumbled as she picked up my discarded garments and laid them out neatly, along with the bulletproof corset. “She broke your heart, so you had to throw her out ’cause she might do it again.”
I stood rigid, trying to deny it. Desperately, I fought to regain control of the tears that pricked my eyes. Yet she had hit the truth more soundly than I expected.
“I don’t have a heart to break,” I affirmed to myself, as much as to her.
She snorted, rather indelicately. I turned to reprimand her. She flashed me a cheeky grin, as if she had done it deliberately to break me out of my gloomy outlook on my life and future. A lonely outlook.
“Go back to work,” I ordered, not ungently. “And tell Mickey when he returns that I don’t want him getting into any trouble so that I have to rescue him. My mind will be full enough keeping myself whole and hale in that district. Even Inspector Witherspoon’s Runners won’t go there with less than an army.” I’d be safer in my rags, part of the background rather than wearing an easily identifiable uniform.
Life wasn’t safe. Not for me or for any of the young people gone missing. Not even a baron’s daughter or a Romany girl of intelligence and independent mind.
Chapter Nineteen
“SPARE A H’PENNY for tea?” I asked a man of substantial girth and middling means judging by the brocade of his waistcoat. He stood at the edge of a long dock surveying the loading of a tall ship with a supplementary steam paddle wheel. The short smokestack suggested that he still relied more on the canvas to sail across the deep ocean and used steam only when wind failed completely, or navigating inland rivers to the ports, like the Thames downriver from the Tower.
“Get away with you,” he snarled, kicking at my dirty skirts.
I jerked my outstretched palm back into my pocket, just in case I needed more defense than scuttling away with bowed back and using the stout walking stick as a crutch.
“Won’t never get nothing from the likes o’ ’im,” a gravelly voice muttered from the shadow cast by an old warehouse that seemed a bit too clean and well-kept for the neighborhood. The doors and window frames just under the eaves sported new paint, and the gutters looked solid.
I surveyed the man in a filthy greatcoat and wilted wide-brimmed hat that hid much. After three hours of prowling through the relentless drizzle, I’d finally found the man I sought. Mickey and Kit Doyle lounged against a tumble of crates off to my left. To the right, another small, shadowy form sat atop a coil of rope, dangling short legs over the rim.
“Do I know you?” I asked the man.
“No,” he replied emphatically and turned to flee.
“Your accent slipped,” I said, straightening from my hunch and easing the unnatural strain on my back and the unforgiving corset. I’d never have achieved this disguise if I’d worn a normal one.
He paused, mid-step.
“You accompany Lord Ruthven about town, yet disguise yourself as a beggar to deliver his messages. I wonder why Inspector Witherspoon hasn’t taken you to the Yard for questioning in regard to the disappearance of Miss Abigail Norwynd.”
“Witherspoon’s shortsighted and won’t see the obvious even when it’s pointed out to him.” His voice returned to the normal drawl with a bit of a clip in some words of a man who had grown up with one accent and worked hard to obscure it. I guessed he’d been educated in the south.
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “The inspector is quite class conscious but very thorough when his intellect is engaged.”
The man whirled to face me, eyes bright and curious. Those familiar eyes . . . Pale brown, almost hazel, eager and yet world-weary at the same time. Not the eyes of the man I’d deflected from kidnapping Miss Ada long ago. That man had been darker, possibly only dirtier, and his eyes hooded and shadowed by a cap brim so that I couldn’t determine their exact color. I’d only presumed them darker because of his skin tones.
The image of a curved scar disappearing up a sleeve flashed before me. Stamata! She’d been the nimble kidnapper, determined to force Ada to rebuild the transference engine. The scar showed where a surgeon—possibly Polidari himself—had repaired the broken wrist.
I remained wary as I dragged yet another memory out of many. I’d seen this man more recently, and not just with Lord Ruthven or in his beggar disguise.
I cocked my head, trying for a different angle to shake loose the right memory.
“Allow me to introduce myself, Madame Magdala.” He bowed properly for a man approaching an older woman of equal status if not rank. “Right Reverend Morten Rigby, at your service.”
The young cleric in search of the treatise on the Reform Act!
I wiggled my fingers to signal my young helpers to move closer. This man would not escape me.
“This conversation needs to take place more privately.” I eyed the merchant on the dock. He seemed intent on the handling of his cargo coming off the ship. Still he could listen, if he chose to.
“You might be interested to know that yon merchant rented this place not two days ago, after the Bow Street Runners invaded and found it empty. It has no use to the owner now.”
“Oh?” I asked. “And who would the owner be?”
“No one I can tell you about.”
That said a lot and not enough.
“Shall we meet back at the café in an hour?” he asked, sidling away an inch at a time.
“No, you will accompany me back to the café, with my escort.” I gestured to the two boys and a mop-haired girl of six who had the most nimble fingers for pickpocketing in the entire city. I had future plans for her. Might be time to bring her in and complete her training under close supervision so that she didn’t get caught and lose those fingers in punishment for her crimes.
Father Rigby heaved a great whoosh of air and then in again, as if he’d forgotten to breathe. “Very well. Though I’d like to shed this garb and be clean again.”
“Time enough for that, after we discover more about each other’s observations and plans.” I resumed my hunch from mid back to shoulder and leaned on the stick as I led the strange parade back toward Charing Cross Road.
A gesture sent one of the younger boys in my entourage off to Lambeth Palace to check Father Rigby’s credentials.
“May I have my rosary back?” Father Rigby asked as he settled into the wing-backed chair beside my hearth. He’d shed the greatcoat and hat to reveal a normal cleric’s black trousers and shirt, minus the white ascot. The fine weave of his clothing looked a bit shiny and threadbare with age, but still respectable. He held out his left hand.
Ruefully, I handed over the strand of black-and-silver beads with a rather plain silver crucifix dangling from one end. “Raggedy Maggedity must be losing her touch if you noticed,” I said, glad I’d banished my companions to the scullery for tea and buttered bread while I interviewed the reverend in my semiprivate parlor reserved for special customers or as extra space when my salon overflowed my rooms. We’d entered by the stair at the back so as not to arouse suspicion among the last, lingering customers before closing.
“She’s very good. I doubt anyone but me would have felt her tiny fingers filching the smallest coin out of my inside pocket.” Rigby ran his fingers along the strand of black-and-silver beads before replacing it in his trouser pocket. Had he checked to see if any were missing?
A vision of a black-and-silver strand of beads choking the life out of me and my café flashed before my inner vision. His silver decade beads were neither filigree nor tarnished. The vision must mean something else.
“I used to be as good or better than she, but I’m a bit out of practice.” He held up both hands and examined the long fingers.
“The withered hand?” I glanced at the greatcoat hanging on the rack beside the door. A black glove hung from the right sleeve as if a small hand still filled it. A clever prosthetic. Actually a marvel of clockwork and puppetry.
“A useful disguise. Everyone notices it while pretending they don’t, so they won’t have to be disgusted. The fascination of horror. They dwell so long on imagining how they might feel if it happened to them, that they forget to notice anything else. The military greatcoat and hat give me a bit of credence and authenticity as a wounded war hero. I learn a lot from retired soldiers also living on the street.”
I poured tea for him, and he lifted the cup with his left hand.
“Naturally left-handed?” I asked. “Or a great deal of practice?”
“Bit of both. The world is not kind to left-handers—going back to old heraldry terminology, left is the sinister side, so a left-handed person is also sinister, black-hearted, in league with the Devil. I trained to use the right as much as possible. But when I must go about the streets in disguise for His Grace the Archbishop, my left hand is just as dexterous as ever.”
“Except when picking pockets.”
He laughed long and loud, resting his head against the chair back. “Oh, I still have my hidden right hand for that. I just don’t have to use that skill as often as I did before His Grace—merely Bishop of London then—took me in and educated me.”
“Winchester? His Grace’s alma mater?”
He nodded.
“Rosaries are out of fashion these days.”
“And His Grace does not fully approve of a public display, though he keeps one by his prie-dieu. Old Church and all. He’s the one who sent me to Rome for a year to study ancient rituals of the Church. I picked up the habit there. Useful for meditation and penitentiary prayer. Also useful in sorting my thoughts or the pieces of a complex and puzzling conspiracy.”
Lucy came in with a tray of substantial cheese and plain scones with jam and Devonshire cream. She curtsied deeply, never letting her eyes stray long from Father Rigby’s thin face with the high cheekbones and a slightly receding chin. He looked a bit rabbity with an overbite. That didn’t deter my Lucy.
Father Rigby returned her gaze with equal admiration.
“What did you learn about ancient rituals in Rome?” I pointedly admired the lovely scones rather than peer any closer into the attraction between these two young people. Eventually they might make a match. Unlikely since she had no dowry, and I wouldn’t approve until he gave up his clandestine jobs and settled into a parish or administrative work for the archbishop.
“I learned that the claim by necromancers that Christianity in and of itself is the worship of death with the promise of resurrection is entirely false. I learned that Archbishop Howley did not betray his brother Freemasons by declaring necromancy not only a crime of murder but blasphemy as well. The Freemasons have not endorsed that portion of the Reform Act because they feel that addressing necromancy as a crime against man and God shouldn’t be necessary. The death cult goes against everything Freemasonry stands for. It is obviously a crime—the crime of murder—and should be dealt with as such.”
“Interesting. And yet His Grace opposed the reforms in the House of Lords.”
“You know why.”
I nodded.
&nb
sp; “Traditionists feel that those who own land should determine our government and not the masses of industrial workers who own nothing but their lives and souls. They found something in his past, painful enough that he felt better served to vote against the bill than have a scandal exposed. The only way he could get his laws against necromancy passed was to stand down from his arguments against reform. He convinced his blackmailers of the same, but had to write his treatise against the act to please them.”
“I know. I helped write that treatise based on research from my library,” I said quietly.
“You did! I thought the phrasing was off from his usual style when he gave it to me to add a few Biblical quotes to give it authenticity.”
“Did he ever tell you what scandal would be loosed on the public if he did not comply?”
A moment of stony silence. “No.”
I couldn’t tell if he lied or not. So I smiled at him, and suddenly I knew where he’d come from. But I needed to change the subject rather than reveal that I knew the archbishop’s deepest secret.
“I had not realized the cult of necromancy had grown so large and powerful as to require additional laws.” I jerked my head at Lucy so she’d leave. She’d indulged her fancy for Father Rigby long enough. I was certain they would flirt later and perhaps begin a courting dance.
I’d lost one helper to a hasty marriage. I did not want to lose another. Time enough for that later, when they both had a bit of money to ease their way through society.
“So what is your position with the archbishop that you must disguise yourself as a civilian with a withered hand?”
“When escorting Lord Ruthven about town, I claim it as a war wound.” Reluctantly, he watched Lucy leave and then returned his attention to me.
“How do you manage that? You can’t be old enough to have served even as late as Waterloo.” Nearly twenty years ago.
“Again, I use distraction. Amazing how old a weary face can make one appear.” He frowned, squinted nearsightedly, then dropped his chin and shoulders. The vibrant young man in his mid-twenties suddenly aged another two decades. I could hone my own skills observing him.
The Transference Engine Page 16