by Alex Grecian
“But you could hire someone to sew in the name,” Fiona said. “If it’s a girl, I mean. You mustn’t let the tradition die out.”
“Do you know that my mother has asked for it back? The coverlet, I mean. She’s decided I shouldn’t be the one to have it after all, and she’s going to give it to my cousin.”
“Oh, no.”
“But I won’t give it back. She gave it to me and it’s mine.”
“But why? Why would she take it back?”
“We differ in our opinions about Walter.”
“She doesn’t care for Mr Day?”
“It’s really my father, I suppose. She’s simply echoing his opinions like one of those nasty birds that speak.”
“A mynah bird, you mean.”
“One of those, with its croaking voice. Very like my mother, actually.”
“Oh, dear. But Mr Day is wonderful, isn’t he?”
“Yes. And therein lies the difference of our opinions on the matter. They had another boy all picked out for me, and I went and married a valet’s son.”
“I adore Mr Day, of course, but why did you choose him, if there was someone else?”
“Because he’s the kindest person I’ve ever known. Had I married the boy my father picked for me, I would have become tough and bitter and a little bit dead inside. But with Walter I can be the person I would like to be. He thinks I am already that person, that ideal person of my imagination. That is why I love him. He is gentle and good and thoughtful and he loves me for who he thinks I am. I would so like to be that person. And when he looks at me, I am.”
“How old were you? When you married?”
“Not much older than you, I suppose. But a handful of years makes all the difference at your age. You must be patient.”
“Have you noticed Mr Hammersmith’s hands? His fingers?”
“They’re long.”
“They’re delicate. I imagine him at a piano sometimes in a beautiful shiny black suit, and he’s playing something wonderful and moving, his fingers dancing to and fro over the keys.”
“I can’t imagine Mr Hammersmith playing a piano or wearing anything but a soiled police uniform.”
“You must use your imagination,” Fiona said.
“And you must be more careful about your imaginings. Men are not strong enough to endure our ideas. They are what and who they are, and they will always be that. Our imaginations betray us.”
“Do you feel betrayed?”
“Not in the least. But Mr Day is exactly what I thought he was and would be.”
“Well, anyway, you shouldn’t give this back. Not ever.” Fiona held the coverlet up to the light.
“I won’t.”
“Good,” Fiona said. “I’ll help you hide it if they ever come visiting. Your family, I mean.”
“Let’s make a pact.”
“We should have a code. I love codes.”
“I don’t know any,” Claire said.
“We’ll think of one.”
Claire winced and Fiona leaned toward her.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Claire said. “A cramp, is all.”
“That’s normal enough. My father says there should be some cramping this far along, but we need to fetch him round if they start coming regularly.”
“How regularly?”
“Ten minutes, I think. Every ten minutes or so.”
“Well, it’s not that. It’s only every so often. I’m sure I’m fine.”
“I could send for him now. Just to be safe.”
“No, I really am fine. Just tired. The sun will be up soon, won’t it?”
“Yes,” Fiona said. “You should try to sleep.”
“I think I’ll just rest a bit. Do you mind?”
“Not at all. I’ll be just down the hall. And Constable Winthrop is right downstairs.”
“Thank you.”
Fiona stood, and Claire stretched out under the coverlet and closed her eyes. Fiona leaned across her and blew out the candle. She picked up the water cup and carried it back to the washstand. She eyed the pail of dirty water suspiciously, then bent and grabbed it by its wire handle and took it to the door.
“Fiona?”
She stopped and looked back. “Yes?”
“Thank you. I mean, really. Thank you.”
Fiona smiled and said nothing. There was no way to respond that would adequately express how she felt. Language was often frustrating when it came to simple human emotions.
“And Fiona?”
“Yes?”
“Nevil Hammersmith has the longest eyelashes I have ever seen on a man. Have you told him how you think about him?”
Fiona nearly dropped the water pail. She hunched her shoulders and the water sloshed about, but none of it spilled.
“Good night, Claire,” she said.
“Good night.”
Fiona stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind her, and let out a huge sigh. Then she went looking for a place to dump the dirty water.
17
After a long walk underground, Jack and Cinderhouse came up to the surface inside a small obelisk at the corner of the St John of God cemetery. The door that was set back in the obelisk was ancient oak banded with iron, and the hinges squeaked and stuck. They were only able to open it halfway, and they squeezed through the crack into the grey predawn. There was not a person in sight in any direction they looked. The sky was overcast and there was a cool spring breeze blowing through the grass and along the tops of the tombstones.
Jack swayed in the wind. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, bringing in the fresh moist air and blowing out the dust and blood that had filled his nostrils for so long. He felt the wind brush against his bare testicles and he opened his eyes. He gave Cinderhouse a quick glance, just to make sure he was still there, then walked away through the stones, letting the grass poke up between his toes and the first few drops of rain spatter against his face. His legs gave way and he fell and tumbled until he fetched up against the side of a stone. He looked up at the name engraved in the front of the stone, but he didn’t recognize it. It was not the name of anyone he had touched, and so he felt a mild disappointment. He knew that the odds were against the body under him being one of his own, but the entire day had felt so much like it belonged to him that he had half expected it to be a familiar corpse. It was his birthday all over again and everything ought to be his.
From that prone position, he looked around at the sea of stones and wondered at the number of graveyards in London, so many of them filled with people he had not managed to transform before they met their ends in other ways, at other hands. He silently apologized to them all for being so slow in his work. He wondered what would happen as the city continued to grow and lap over its current boundaries. Would the bodies beneath him be plowed into the soil and homes built atop their bones? Or would they sink farther under and join the forgotten dead in the catacombs beneath?
When he had caught his breath, he pulled himself up and staggered over to where Cinderhouse still stood in the shadow of the obelisk. He took the bald man by the arm and leaned against him and allowed himself to be led across the graveyard to Cambridge Street. They were somewhere in Agar Town, he knew. Not the best area to be caught out after dark. Jack had come up far from his old stomping grounds and even farther from his home. He imagined his landlady would have given up on him by now. She wouldn’t wait more than a few weeks to decide he wasn’t coming back. Perhaps she thought he was dead. No matter. Whatever she thought, she would have cleaned the place out and found someone new to pay the rent. His things would have been donated or put out in the street. There were no relatives to claim them. His old life was gone and there was no going back.
But he was content to be alive and aboveground and free.
“Forward,” he said, “into the future. On with a brand-new life.”
The bald man gave him a puzzled look, but said nothing, which was a relief. Jack didn’t like the man’s voice. It was
high and reedy and grated on his nerves.
Jack heard running water and he pulled Cinderhouse across the street, to where they could see down past the towpath to the black surface of Regent’s Canal. The early-morning air was wet and clung to them like gossamer. Jack felt a cool mist on his face, but did not know whether it came up from the canal or down from the heavy grey sky.
In the predawn hour there was little traffic, but Jack knew that carriages would choke the street as soon as the first signs of approaching daylight began to show on the horizon. They needed to find a place to hide before the sun came up. And something to wear. There was no way they could pass unnoticed in the city without proper clothing.
He turned his back on the canal and Cinderhouse mirrored him, turning when he did, doing as he did, unless instructed otherwise. He appreciated how quick the bald man was to follow his orders.
A dog trotted by on the other side of the street, then stopped and looked at the two men. It wagged its tail hopefully and altered its course, heading slowly toward them, perhaps in search of food, but too wild to come directly to them. It circled, its ears laid back but its tail limply moving back and forth. Jack frowned and squinted down the length of the street to where a splinter of darkness had peeled away from the purple sky and was moving steadily toward them, growing as it came, fashioning itself into the shape of a large black omnibus, four horses out front, chuffing away toward the day’s first destination. Behind the bus came a wave of water pouring from the sky in a solid sheet, advancing as if pulled along by the steady horses, as if they were a harbinger of the weather. Thor’s chariot.
The dog, wild and stupid, thin and hungry, almost as thin as Jack, advanced toward the two men, unaware of the bus. Perhaps it was deaf, or perhaps the sound of the rain masked the rumbling of the wheels. Jack felt his heart begin to beat faster in anticipation. He felt Cinderhouse tense next to him.
The horses clopped past the two men. There was a solid thunk and a sharp yip of pain, and then the rain poured down and the bus disappeared into the grey, headed somewhere on the other side of the canal. Rain drove down and splashed up and settled down again in waves, running off the sides of the towpath and joining the black water below.
Jack stepped out into the street and looked for the dog. He found a spatter of blood, already being washed away, and a trail. He followed the red swath, which led him to a small pile of organs, a rope of intestines replacing the blood trail. Soon he found the dog itself, weak now and stopped by the curb on the other side of Cambridge Street, unable to step up out of the lane. It had pulled itself into a tiny bundle, shivering in the rain, ripped apart by the callous horses, by the wheels of the black bus. It looked up at Jack, and he knelt beside it on the bloody stones. He put out his hand and touched the dog’s snout. The tip of its tongue extended far enough to lick his fingers.
“We should put it out of its misery,” Cinderhouse said. “Show some mercy.”
Jack looked up, surprised to hear the bald man speak. He had not heard Cinderhouse follow him, had barely heard his voice over the sound of the rain.
“‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’” Jack said. “‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.’”
“But it is raining.”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” God, but the fly was a stupid creature. His company was quickly becoming tedious. “I mean to say that you cannot ask me to show mercy. It must be freely given or it means nothing.”
“I’ll do it then. The poor thing.”
Jack motioned for Cinderhouse to move back and he looked down at the dog again. It was panting and whining, staring up at Jack, its insides painted across the curb, blood welling from its ear. Jack smiled at it and ran the tips of his fingers over its wet muzzle again.
“Death is not a thing to be feared, little fly.” Jack spoke to Cinderhouse, but he looked at the dog. “We are larvae, all of us, awaiting transformation. We must be patient and we must understand that all change is painful.”
“Just bash its head with something.”
Jack looked up at Cinderhouse again. They were sharing a precious moment with the dog, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and Cinderhouse was unable to appreciate what was happening. The bald man was pacing about uselessly, looking for a rock to use. Jack decided to ignore him. He turned his attention to the dog just in time to see that pleading expression leave its eyes. Its paws twitched one last time and it went still. He watched as it ceased being a dog and became something else entirely. He stopped breathing and his lips parted in awe. He felt he might pass out. This was the ultimate communication with the universe, and it had been denied him for so long.
Someone ought to pay for that.
He touched the dog again, but it no longer held any interest for him. It was already going cold. The rain beat against its blank eyeballs.
Cinderhouse shoved something at him, breaking his field of vision. A wooden rod, perhaps thrown off by a passing carriage.
“Use this,” Cinderhouse said.
Jack stood and stepped toward the rail. “You use it,” he said.
He kept his back to the bald man and listened, but could hear nothing over the sound of the rain. It was entirely possible that Cinderhouse would hit Jack with the rod and gain his freedom. Jack wouldn’t blame him at all. He would use the rod if he were in the bald man’s shoes. Or any shoes.
“It’s already dead.”
Jack turned and smiled. He reached out his hand and took the rod from Cinderhouse.
“You missed it,” Jack said.
“Poor thing.”
“Maybe. But we’re all going to die, aren’t we? We can’t all expect pity.”
“It didn’t have to die like that.”
“But it did have to die like that. It had no choice.”
“Not after the bus hit it.”
“The bus was simply a part of the process. The mechanism of transformation. We are surrounded every day by such machines. We are such machines.”
Cinderhouse stepped up to the rail as a carriage rolled by. Its wheels sluiced water up over the curb, over their toes. Jack watched the rain bounce off Cinderhouse’s smooth scalp as traffic began to pick up on the bridge. It was still dark, but the rain had already begun to ease into a gentle sprinkle. No carriages stopped for them, nobody wondered about the two men and the dead dog. Everyone had a place to go. Jack knew that if he gave the bald man enough time, he would speak again. Until then, he was content to stand and listen to the soft patter of rain on the canal.
“It was mostly children for me,” Cinderhouse said. “The ones I killed. I mean, as you say, transformed. The ones I transformed.”
“Ah, that is not something I can appreciate. Not children.”
“But surely you . . .”
“Never a child. Children are already in the midst of transformation. They’re not yet ripe, are they?”
“Ripe?”
“Promise me you’ll leave the children be.”
“I . . . I’ll try.”
“You would not want to break a promise you make to me.”
“I won’t.”
“Was it only children?”
“No. I killed two policemen.”
Jack stopped looking at the canal. He had been just about to push Cinderhouse over the wall. “Policemen? You surprise me, little fly.”
“They were going to take a child away from me.”
“And so you lashed out, did you?”
“Yes.”
“But they caught you.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can’t very well kill one policeman without expecting to be caught, let alone two of them. They’re a bit overprotective of their own, aren’t they?”
“They beat me. Broke my nose.”
“But they did not kill you outright in return for what you had done.”
“No.”
“That was unkind of them.”
“Was it?”
“Do you know their names?”
“One of the ones you killed?”
“No. The one who caught me. One of them.”
“I meant the dead ones. The ones you killed. Surely you kept their names. Out of respect.”
“One was named Pringle. He was a customer of mine. Constable Pringle. I don’t remember his full name. I don’t know the other one’s name at all.”
“You do them a disservice. They shared their experience with you, allowed you to be a part of it. The least you can do is remember them.”
“I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“More’s the pity.”
Jack turned and walked along the footpath toward the city and Cinderhouse followed. Jack didn’t turn around when the bald man spoke again.
“His wife’s name was Claire.”
“Who?”
“The policeman who caught me. The one who sent me to Bridewell.”
“His wife’s name was Claire?”
“I visited her one time. At their house in Primrose Hill. It’s not very far from here, actually.”
“Ah, you remember that, do you? Their house? The woman?”
“Quite clearly. She was lovely.”
“My dear little fly, you sound as if you have unfinished business to attend to.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do,” Jack said. He licked his lips and tasted rain. “I really do.”
“What should I do?”
“Don’t worry, Peter. I’ll help you figure it out.”
He looked up at the dark sky as he walked and he let the rain hit his eyeballs the way it had drummed against the dog’s eyes. Finally he had to blink. He splashed along through the puddles underfoot, and he led his dear stupid little fly toward the city.
18
They crossed the field carefully. The rain had gone as quickly as it had come, and clouds scudded away across the sky, the only movement in sight. Day and Hammersmith shuttered their lanterns and, when their eyes had grown used to the starlight and moonlight, they crept through the grass, watching for movement against the blue horizon. Day drew his Colt Navy, but kept it held down at his side. There was a handful of loose tombstones scattered about, tumbled down by rain and snow and years, but there were no men hiding behind those stones. The three policemen were alone.