The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  Something about the notion sent a chill up and down her aching arms.

  She thought of the most outlandish part of Berta’s tale.

  I heard it was a witch that done it. That they tried to lock her in, so she turned herself into a witch-fire and burned the whole place up with her.

  “Don’t suppose it really matters now, though, do it? Home, then?” he asked, handing her back her stick.

  Lily glanced at their exit, the door leading back into the alley. Then her gaze was drawn in the opposite direction, to where a rectangle of deeper darkness indicated another opening in the far wall.

  Lily could almost feel what it would be like to crawl into her bed, letting the weariness seep out of her bones.

  Without any of the answers she had come for.

  “One more place to look,” she said and picked her way to the dark doorway.

  It opened onto a stairwell. On one side, the steps rose to what remained of the East Wing. On the other, it descended into utter darkness.

  He pulled the stub of a candle and a book of matches from his pocket.

  “I thought you said you didn’t carry gear.”

  “Hard to toss a place if you can’t see where anything is. You sure you want to go down there?” Sam asked.

  “I need to see it.”

  He shrugged, readying a match. Lily reached out, grasping his hand to stop him.

  “The gas,” she noted.

  Sam looked up at the hole in the ceiling. Broken pipes jetted out from between the charred floorboards.

  “They’d have turned it off by now. The works wouldn’t want the stuff floating out into the ether, particularly if no one’s paying the bill. Still, if you’d rather not chance it . . .”

  Lily studied the stairwell. The way before her was pitch, devoured by the dark.

  “Light it.”

  Sam met her eyes, raising a brow.

  “Here’s to our luck.”

  He struck. The match flared—then burned, small and steady, a single spark in the darkness.

  He mated it to the wick of the candle and the light grew brighter.

  The stairs to the basement lay clear before them.

  “Ladies first,” Sam offered.

  The ceiling was lower here than on the floors above. The whole of the space was enclosed in sterile white tile. There was no sign of the raging blaze, no ash on the floors or smoke staining the walls. It was as though the space had been stopped up in a jar and preserved.

  The whole of it was sunk below the level of the street. There were no windows, not so much as a sliver of glass to break up the monotony of the tile. Lily’s footsteps echoed as they moved down the hall.

  The first room they passed was the boiler. The walls here were unfinished concrete, the space dominated by an enormous black furnace. It was still and cold now, but must have put off a monstrous heat and roar when fired up. There were several iron doors set into it—more, Lily realized, than were necessary merely for adding coal or regulating the fire.

  “What’re all those for?” Sam asked.

  “I think they must have used it to dispose of waste,” Lily replied, keeping her voice even.

  Sam made no further comment.

  They made their way down the hall past more empty labs and storerooms. Their contents seemed largely intact and untouched, as if even the thieves and scavengers had hesitated to invade the sanctity of this dark space.

  The light of Sam’s candle flickered off the polished tiles, casting dancing shadows along their way.

  At the end of the hall lay the operating theatre.

  It was a large space, though the low ceilings still gave it a claustrophobic feel. Cabinets lined one wall, stocked with jars labeled alcohol, witch hazel, iodine. There were boxes of cotton wool and sterile bandages with mildew slowly crawling up the labels. On the other side, a polished steel trolley was laid out with syringes, rubber tubing, and a gleaming set of surgical instruments.

  A human skull, most likely liberated from the skeleton in the office upstairs, rested on top.

  In the center of the room were a pair of tables, set side-by-side. Each was equipped with a row of sturdy leather straps.

  “I don’t know much about doctors, but isn’t it a bit odd that there’s two of them?” Sam pointed out. “What, were they operating on two patients at once?”

  “It doesn’t make much sense,” Lily admitted.

  She unfolded a strange metal leg from the foot of the table. There were two of them, articulated to extend both up and out from the base. At the ends were metal hoops that reminded her of the stirrups on a horse.

  “What’re those for?”

  “I’m not sure you’d want to hear my guess,” Lily said, thinking of the trouble that had brought Berta and her colleagues to this clinic in the first place.

  Sam picked up one of the solid metal buckles that lay across the center of the table.

  “This the usual sort of thing? Tying people down before you operate on them?”

  “No. I don’t believe it is.” Fingers of unease crawled up her arms.

  “Something ain’t right about this place,” Sam concluded, dropping the buckle back onto the table.

  “Let’s go.”

  The wrecked hall above felt welcoming after the cold horror of the basement. Lily picked her way over the debris to the door, using her stick to keep from sliding on the shifting mass of charred wood and cracked tile.

  “Did you find what you were after, then?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Lily replied shortly, frustration burning through her.

  “Maybe you brought the wrong escort. Seems to me his lordship might’ve been more help to you than I was.”

  It had occurred to Lily as well. Strangford might have run his sensitive hands over those tables in the basement and teased out the full extent of their secrets.

  He could do it now, if Lily went to him and asked . . . subjecting him to who-knew-what horror along the way.

  How could she demand that of him when she couldn’t be sure this place had anything to do with the killer they sought?

  Ash had told her that was a dead end. Lily couldn’t control her power. That she had seen this place in a vision provoked to reveal Estelle’s killer meant nothing.

  She couldn’t go to Strangford until she had a better reason for thinking this place was worth his trouble.

  Where did that leave her?

  She thought of the broken lock on the door to the East Wing. There had been women in that room when it burned. Some of them must have succeeded in fighting their way out.

  Any one of those women would certainly be able to tell her more about what happened inside this nightmarish place. What had become of them? If Berta’s impression held true, they would all have been terribly ill or otherwise damaged when they escaped. Could they have survived long outside a hospital? Lily didn’t know enough to say.

  Unless some of them hadn’t stayed out for long. As their illness continued to progress, they might have sought help. There were certainly other places in the city where they might have found it—other charity hospitals.

  Like St. Bart’s, where Dr. Gardner worked.

  Lily followed Sam through the gap in the boarded-up door to the alley. She was still so engrossed in her own thoughts, she bumped right into him.

  He stood still and tense only a step from the door, staring at the six men who faced them across the alley.

  “Bit of warning about this one would’ve been nice,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Up to a bit of late night shopping, are we?”

  The man who spoke stood near the center of the group. He was older than the others, silver showing through in his mustache. His face was concealed by the shadow from the brim of his bowler hat.

  Something about him seemed familiar, the tone of his voice sending prickles across Lily’s skin.

  “Just having a look,” Sam replied.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nothing much.
Place is well picked over, unless you’re in the market for rusty cots and wet bandages.”

  Sam’s manner was easy, but Lily noted that his hand had gone to his pocket, where she knew he had secured the knife he had used earlier to pry the boards off the door. Quietly, she adjusted her grip on her walking stick.

  Then the clouds shifted. Moonlight spilled down into the alley. It glinted off a bit of brass pinned to the lapel of the man who stood beside the thugs’ leader. He was dark haired and clean-shaven, both better and more soberly dressed than the toughs who stood around him.

  “Look sharp, Art. That’s her, from before.”

  Lily had no trouble recognizing the man who pointed at her from the end of the row. It was Frank the Spiv, his nose purple and twisted from their encounter earlier that day.

  “So it is, Frank,” the leader of the thugs agreed. He stepped forward and the moonlight illuminated his own features.

  It was the publican of the Golden Fleece, the one who had eyed Lily and Berta as he passed while the whore shared her story.

  “Not just shopping, then, are we?” Art mused. “We are not over-fond of strangers nosing around our old Liberty, are we, gents?”

  “We are not,” Frank the Spiv replied.

  “I assume you gave the lady fair warning to mind herself, when you encountered her previously?”

  “I did, but she weren’t much for hearing it.” Frank spat at the pavement.

  “Seems a firmer hand is needed.”

  “How firm?” asked a hulking brute at the other end of the row.

  “She was asking names,” Frank replied.

  “Pity,” Art noted. He checked his pocket watch. “Right, then. Best get on with it. Vince, take the lady. Towers, Frank, you should be able to handle the lad.”

  Sam stepped out from the wall of the hospital. Lily instinctively turned her back to his. Quickly glancing down, she saw him slip the blade from his pocket, the shining length of it just concealed behind his leg.

  She lifted her walking staff, taking hold of it with both hands.

  “Watch for the stick, Vince,” Frank called.

  Vince, the hulking brute, lumbered closer. Lily went low, swinging into the vulnerable spot just above the outside of his knee.

  His leg buckled and he fell back, grabbing it and cursing.

  “Bitch broke my leg!”

  “I said, watch the stick,” Frank countered.

  “It’s a boy and a woman,” Art snapped. “Quit mucking about.”

  Lily felt Sam move behind her. She risked a glance, watching as he burst into action.

  He fought like a Limehouse tough, handling blade and fists like someone who had been forced to do so before. He took a blow to the jaw, head snapping back, but quickly retaliated with a sharp swipe of the knife. The man named Towers screamed, pulling back his wounded arm.

  Art turned to the man who remained standing beside him—the one who wore the brass lapel pin. “It appears the matter requires further assistance, Mr. Gibbs. Are you willing?”

  “It’s a disappointment, Mr. Bennington, but what needs must be done.”

  “Mickey, help Mr. Gibbs with the lady. I’ll assist Frank with the chink.”

  The last of the publican’s thugs, the one he called Mickey, ran toward her, Gibbs following more sedately behind him.

  As he moved closer, the full moonlight revealed the detail of his pin. It was shaped into two interlocked carats—the sigil of Joseph Hartwell’s eugenics club. The shock of seeing it there nearly cost her, delaying her reaction by a critical second.

  She recovered just in time to strike the first of them in the gut with her stick, winding him as she shifted her body to the side.

  Gibbs pulled a cudgel from his sleeve. Lily had only a moment to raise her yew to block the blow. The force of it rattled her arms. She made a quick jab for his face, but he skipped back, avoiding it.

  Behind her, Sam had lost his knife. He ran at Frank the Spiv, jamming his shoulder into his midsection and driving both of them over a dustbin. He landed on top, striking three quick, brutal blows to Frank’s already wounded nose.

  The dandy screamed with pain, clutching at his face.

  Bennington grabbed the back of Sam’s shirt, yanking him away.

  Lily blocked another blow from the cudgel, then stumbled, her heel catching on an uneven paving stone. Gibbs dove at her, knocking her to the ground.

  Lily clasped her hands together, then drove her elbows down into the soft place where his neck met his shoulder.

  He howled in rage and pain, rolling off of her. She scrambled to her feet, backing up to the door, where Sam met her.

  Frank the Spiv remained sprawled over the dustbin, clutching his nose and moaning. The one named Towers, that Sam had sliced with his blade, was busy wrapping a strip of his shirt around the wound.

  The others were still in the game.

  Art Bennington stepped back and lit a cigarette, dropping the spent match into a puddle. He had taken measure of the situation—one she suspected was informed by a great deal of experience—and apparently determined his assistance would not be needed to finish this job now that Lily and Sam had been disarmed.

  Vince stood, testing his leg. He stalked toward her, displaying only a hint of a limp. The other tough, Mickey, had recovered from his winding. He plucked Sam’s knife from the pavement and tested the heft of it in his hand.

  It was clear he had handled one before.

  Gibbs collected his cudgel from the ground, moving in behind them. Since the blows Lily had struck to his neck, the light in his eye had changed from a sort of resigned determination to something quick, cold and murderous.

  Lily considered her options.

  They weren’t promising.

  Her eyes flickered to her walking stick, which lay a few yards away on the pavement. She leapt toward it, a desperate move, but Vince was not as crippled as she hoped. He grabbed her by the arm, throwing her toward the wall of the hospital.

  Beside her, Sam closed his eyes and whistled. The note was clear and musical, dancing through the night air.

  Lily’s back hit the stone as Vince’s hands closed around her throat. She kicked him ferociously, scratching at his hands with her nails, but it felt like her limbs were moving through mud.

  Sam whistled again, the sound cut off abruptly as he blocked a blow from the cudgel, leaving his cheek open to a vicious strike from Gibbs’s other hand.

  As she fought for breath, pain blazing across her throat, Lily heard a strange noise from above.

  It was a rustling, thick and soft, as hundreds of wings battered against the night air.

  Through the jagged opening in the roof of the hospital, doves streamed out into the night. They whirled down into the alley and swarmed at the men.

  Wings beat at their faces, knocking hats askew. Sharp beaks scratched and bit at exposed skin, driving cuts into cheeks and hands. It was like being inside a tornado of living things, of talons and soft brown wings.

  Lily’s throat was released as her attacker swatted desperately at the birds, whirling to escape. She staggered away, gasping for air, stumbling into Sam. He stood still and calm, blood streaming from the split skin of his cheek, watching as hundreds of doves tore and beat at their attackers.

  The birds were nearly silent, just the rush of moving air and flapping wings, while the men screamed. Here and there, soft gray bodies fell to the ground, limping or lying still.

  A pair of birds fluttered toward them and Lily cringed back instinctively. They landed on Sam’s arm and shoulder, cooing and nudging at him. He stroked them, then lifted one to his face, whispering to it. He raised his arm and the bird flew away.

  “Let’s go,” he said, wiping the blood from his cheek and flicking it onto the pavement.

  He walked away.

  Lily followed, snatching her walking stick from the paving stones.

  “You did that. You made them come.”

  “Doves are very protective,” Sam comme
nted.

  She heard another scream from behind and glanced back to see a stream of birds rise up into the night above the low buildings.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THERE WERE TOOTHACHES. LEGS tied to wooden splints with rags torn from some third-hand petticoat. Sores, wounds, a plethora of pleurisy. Lily heard the rattle of the coughs from around the corner before she turned to see the line of patients queued up to seek admission to The Royal Hospital of St. Bartholomew—or St. Bart’s, as it was more familiarly known by most Londoners.

  For three-score men, women and children suffering from some of the worst that life could inflict on them, they were a remarkably orderly group. The line was maintained with civility from the latecomers taking up their place in the back to a silent shuffling that made way for a patient carried in on a stretcher by grave-faced men—a slater who had fallen from a roof, Lily heard whispered.

  She felt odd walking past the group to the door itself, as though someone were bound to rebuke her for not waiting her turn. But perhaps the fact that she was walking and not covered in blood or oozing pus or hacking the life from her lungs made it clear enough to those waiting that she was not a threat to their particular order.

  Not to say that she was uninjured.

  The high neck of her blue wool gown concealed the vicious purple bruises that covered her throat. Her nails had been trimmed down to the quick, an attempt to conceal how thoroughly she had torn them when scratching at the man that attacked her. More bruises marked her back and discolored her legs.

  At least she had been able to pull the stitches out of her thigh that morning.

  The admissions desk was a quiet whir of activity, a trio of nurses triaging patients with stern efficiency. This took place in a wide hall with high ceilings and tall windows. The murmur of low voices echoed off the walls in a manner that reminded Lily of a cathedral just before the start of service.

  “Excuse me,” she said, cutting in as one of the nurses finished turning away a gentleman whom he had determined was only suffering from eczema, not leprosy. “Where might I find Dr. Gardner?” She lifted the bag in her hand, from which arose the unmistakable odor of sausage and chips. “I’ve brought his lunch.”