by Viola Carr
Undeterred, I shakes meself off. Christ, is this really the joint them posh artists frequent? Talk about rough trade. I can barely move in here. Dark, smoky, tables jammed tight. Greasy low-lifes hunch over steaming bowls of that loathsome coffee. From shadowy corners ooze grunts, sighs, drunken moans. A few bolder ones is actually going at it where all can behold. “Jesus,” I mutter, “put that thing away.”
A fuck-ugly cuckoo clock on the wall goes off like a chirpy bomb and chimes eleven. Wrong, you witless crank. Must be way past midnight already. I collide with some liquor-reeking cove, and career into the zinc-topped bar. “Your pardon, miss,” he mumbles. Then he spies my chest, and does a drunken double-take.
Minus the gin, so do I.
Long chocolaty hair in a ribbon, ice-carven chin, dark eyes a-shimmer with much drink and little sleep. His rainbow waistcoat’s a mite crumpled, his necktie charmingly crooked.
Oho. Seems Remy ain’t the only one seeking solace after a rough night in a monkey suit, clambering over piles of money and kissing the wrong girl. This is Sheridan Lightwood. Eliza’s artist. The gang’s all here.
I cast a critical eye. A looker, some girls might say, but sommat’s up I don’t like. He’s too slick. Too glossy, a painted icon not quite real . . . and still he’s goggling at my chest, as if he ain’t never seen boobs before.
My crafty self cackles, a witch crooking her finger. Come into my gingerbread house, little boy. What say I ferret some good oil on Eliza’s murder case? Perhaps a certain uppity Royal Society captain might be interested.
A grin swaggers onto my lips and crouches there. Not that I’m undermining poor Eliza, oh no. Not that I’d steal Remy from her in a heartbeat, if only I could figure how.
For shame. Ain’t that at all.
I dip this Sheridan a wink, fingering my velvet skirts as if he makes me want to touch. “I say, sir,” I purr, “ain’t you that artist?”
He’s got the grace to laugh. Tipsy and pleasant, or a man accustomed to harmless fakement. “Astonishing, how far my fame has spread these last few days.” His tones are pure West End, a gentleman’s gentleman, but with a bitter, cynical edge.
I play with my hair. “Could you paint me? I’d like that.” His eyes are shot, his face puffy. I’d bet gold he’s been weeping tonight. The working girls’ glances slide over him, seeking trade elsewhere. Hmm. Too proud, is he? Or just more trouble than he pays for?
“Miss, I’d strip you bare and paint you until you screamed my name, if I weren’t so drunk I’m about to topple.” He frowns. “Or be sick. Just so you’re fully informed.”
His eyes are glazing. Swiftly, I ease him around to face the bar, in case he does either. Seems only the direct approach will profit. “What’s you so sad about, then? Your dog die?”
He sucks smoke from a pipe. “My pitiful life is over, that’s what. For what it was worth.”
“Oh. Well, least you’re still breathing,” I offer, cheerful-like. “Word is, one of your lot got bumped off. Could be worse, eh? Unless you done it, I suppose.”
A sidelong glance. “And what if I did?”
I signal to the snaggle-toothed house keeper for gin. He brings coffee. I glare up his pox-rotted nose in disgust. “Could be to your profit, is all.”
“Ah.” Sheridan offers me his pipe. “The part where you swindle me. Sell it, then, whatever it is. I’m all ears.”
I suck in a twist of smoke, a shady opium dream. I exhale, hoarse, and pass the pipe back. “What’d you say your name was?”
A sharp smile. “Not so famous after all. Sheridan, to you.”
“Well, Sheridan, what if we was to go somewhere together?” I flash an ankle and a cheeky wink. “If I thought you could be dangerous, I’d be all wet and breathless, wouldn’t I? Maybe you’ll cut me up, or squeeze my throat till I choke a little.” I chew a speculative fingertip. “A girl might enjoy that.”
He clicks his tongue, mock outrage. “The whims of modern young ladies.”
“I hate being bored. You arty coves? Bloody crooks, the lot o’ you. Wouldn’t shock me one inch if you was a killer. Or a thief, neither. D’you know that Eve and the Snake? I heard that Italian never painted it at all. Stole it and wrote his name on it.”
Sheridan chuckles, but his face goes dark. Not surprised. More like angry. “Seek no further for your homicidal excitement, then. Clearly the talentless runt is a born criminal.”
“Your murdered friend what’s-’is-name? A sorcerer, s’what I heard. Ooga booga round a bonfire, black cats on broomsticks, rogering the Devil up the arse, or some such.”
“Stupid rumors.” He swallows more smoke. “That man made me famous. He’d have made me rich, too, if he’d lived. I owed him more than any man should owe another.” A cracked laugh. “I just wanted to be good at something. Is that so much to ask?”
That loony cuckoo clock goes off again, clucking like a moonstruck hen. Four o’clock this time. Jesus, the cursed thing’s only got one job. “As it happens, I were jawing ’bout the murder with a girl called Penny—”
“What a curious coincidence. I knew that pretty doctor had to be a plant. Friend of yours?”
“—and Penny said them coppers reckoned she must’ve done for ’im.”
“Not that it’s your concern”—another drag on the pipe—“but that isn’t true. The Watt bitch was indulging her disgusting pleasures in this fine establishment that night.” He drinks his coffee, pulling a face. “Bertie, this is fabulously grotesque. Even filthier than usual. I congratulate you. Oh,” he added, “be a good fellow and tell me where I was, night before last.”
Hunchbacked Bertie leers, his snaggle tooth shining. “In ’ere from two till dawn. You an’ that bronze-haired floozy, what went upstairs with that stinkin’ sailor and ’is parrot.”
I snicker. “And he’d know what bloody time it was, with that crack-brained cuckoo sounding off as it pleases. You’re a watch-maker, ain’t you? Fix it.”
Sheridan just scowls.
“If I recalls right,” Bertie adds, “you whiled away the hours beneath a pair o’ local ladies yerself.”
“I see. That explains the sorry state of my trousers. Business must truly have been desperate. I heard a rumor that I pissed in the coffee. Any truth?”
A cackle. “Tasted no worse if you done so.”
“There you are, then,” says Sheridan loftily. “Gambling, whores, intoxicated oblivion. Sorry to disappoint.” A quizzical frown. “Do I really look like a man who’d strangle you for a lark?”
“Everyone’s a killer, sweetheart. Most folks is just too scared to act on it.” I smile, crooked. Maybe he’ll keep talking, if I play him right. “Are you?”
He critiques me with an ungentlemanly eye. “What I am is tired, miserable, and too damned drunk to play games. Shall we cut to the chase?”
“Suits me.”
“I’ve two observations. The first is that if you’re a police informer, they’ve definitely raised their standards for nosy lying tarts.” He cuts me that edged smile. “But I didn’t do it, and that sick whore Penny didn’t do it, so go fuck yourself.”
“Fair’s fair,” agrees I. “And the second?”
“The second is that yours is far and away the most spectacular attire I’ve witnessed this evening, and I’ve been squinting at rich bitches’ finery since six o’clock.” He drains his coffee and slides a sovereign onto the counter. Deft fingers, stained with red paint. “This appears to have your name on it. I won’t be gentle, but I pay accordingly. Yes or no?”
His redshot gaze meets mine. Such weary, defeated eyes, for a youngster, and sharp sympathy needles my heart. Smart, handsome, career on the rise. Yet he drinks and whores to forget. Dives willingly into his darkest places, because drowning slowly down there is easier to bear than the glaring light of day . . . and I halt my fingers in the sordid treachery of creeping towards that coin, if only to cheer the tragic bastard up for an hour or two.
I swallow hot bile. I always swore no man�
��ll use me like that. Not Lizzie Hyde. I ain’t no bloody pet, without purpose but to please whatever master should stagger by.
So what the fuck is my purpose, then?
“Keep your gold, sir,” I mutter, and stalk out.
Outside, the crowd carries me along, sweeping me almost off my feet in the crush. Music clangs, rough-tuned and raucous like my thoughts. I’m aimless, barely watching where I’m headed.
It should bother me. Inattention’s a killer around here. But I’m too damned angry at myself for the mess I’ve made tonight. Is this Carmine really the killer? Or is Sheridan winding me up? Eliza’d figure it in an instant, o’ course. God rot her. She’s smart enough to pick it when a man’s lying through his teeth.
Just one more reason she’s better than me.
The party sounds of Soho fade, and I melt back into the rookery, dissolving like an evil spirit into hell. Naked green-haired children splat about playing catch-me in the muck, and fairy fire flickers at my feet. Ahh. Already, I’m relaxing into myself, relief groaning through muscle and bone.
My stiletto thrums between my breasts, singing edgy harmony. Even my skin fits better, not someone else’s baggy flesh-suit but mine, taut and succulent as it ought to be. Down here, in the mud-strewn alleys and broken streets, no one can spy me . . . but it’s a good, welcoming hide.
I’m home.
Screw it. I ain’t Eliza, and thank bleeding Christ for that. It’s the Cockatrice for Lizzie Hyde, gin and laughter and illicit good times. And if Eliza don’t like it—if she whines and belly-aches, her skull pounding jealously with what it’s like to be unfettered and free?
She deserves it. I don’t give a fuck.
On the Broad Street corner, the usual crowd of drunkards and fools carouse merry hell in torchlight, a faded rainbow of second-hand rigs. Shouts and laughter clang. A lump-shouldered dwarf fumbles at my skirts, but he’s too damned drunk to pick my pocket, and trips face-first into a dung pile.
“Serve you right,” I mutter. Shorty just pisses himself. At least it’s warm.
The Cockatrice looms from the fog, a tall narrow lurk jammed between a rotting tenement and a brick-walled brewery. Firelight bleeds from cracked shutters. Already I smell gin, rich and treacherous as a lover’s promise, and that warm creature inside me murmurs, eager for oblivion.
I blow a kiss to the namesake figurine winking at me from the lintel, lion’s head and scaly dragon’s body. “How do, you handsome cad?” Then giddy heat rinses me, smoke and sweat and every sweet flavor of sin.
The fire’s bright, stoked afresh with coal and refuse. Crooked card games, drinking, guffaws and snatches of bellowed song. From darker corners, sighs and muffled squeals. The night’s no longer young, and men already slump snoring on the floor, lucky to keep their duds in this den of thieves and scoundrels, what rings with the patter flash.
Boingg! A screeching thing slaps me in the face.
I stumble back, pulse a-gallop . . . and curse at mad Jacky Spring-Heels, the stringy lice-haired cove in the dirty white union suit what just leapt out at me from behind a barrel. He capers triumphantly. “Lizzie git! Lizzie git!”
“Christ, Jacky, you frightened me tripe out.” I swat his scrawny buttoned backside. Jacky just giggles, cross-eyed, and stuffs the ends of ragged white hair into his mouth.
The Cockatrice is a flash house, the haunt of dippers and cracksmen and prigs of all shades, swapping contacts, putting up lays, and getting roaring drunk and screwed. Forgers on the game, too, faking banknotes, doctoring letters of credit, a few telling alterations on a deed from time immemorial indistinguishable from the original. Violent men for sale, too, rampsmen and garroters and toe-cutting thugs who’ll commit any bloodsoaked deed for the price of a night’s lodging and a whore. And fey-struck regulars like Jacky Spring-Heels, who don’t fit no place else, and like as not’d be starved or hanged by now if left to their own odd devices.
At a table, here’s Tom o’ Nine Lives, a fetching mobsman square-rigged, sporting a lecher’s juicy black eye. He’s matching gins with Strangeface Willy, a rotund red-coated Yorkshireman with a face like a dropped pie. Willy handles stolen treasure, silver plate, the kind of pogue a cracksman swipes from a town-house pull, and at some sad juncture he got beat near to death with the ugly stick. His cauliflower noggin and bulging eyes belie a fellow so sweet-natured he almost can’t bear to screw you over.
I wave. “Willy, you handsome devil. Heard some tinny bastard lifted the Queen’s oiler. Got ’er Majesty stuffed up yer arse?”
Willy giggles, drunk. “Fook, no. Wild Johnny ’imself couldn’t christen that streak of shite.”
“Don’t let Johnny hear you say that.”
Willy blows me a kiss, gold a-glimmer on his podgy fingers. A showy cove, is Willy, with an English lord’s manners and a French pirate’s wicked tongue—so I’m reliably informed—on account o’ which pretty girls trip over their petticoats for that ugly twist-lipped smile.
Simpering by Willy’s side is buxom Three-Tot Polly—so called because she’ll do anything for two gins, and God help you if she manages three. I wave at her, too. At the next table slouches King Carlos, a skinny cattle thief with warts and a lisping Spanish lilt, dealing a hand of loo with swarthy Philo Horsecock from the pawnshop, what needs no further introduction.
Others I recognize, too, alongside faces new that make me glance sidelong. A girl’s gotta take care. Can’t never tell who’s a snout, a police informer—or worse, a spy for the god-rotted Royal, telling tales about who’s trading unorthodox gear, who’s spouting radical nonsense, or who’s just plain weird. Whisper the wrong sweet nothings, and by sunrise you’ll be screaming for mercy in a stinking electrified hole in the Tower—if they’ll only listen you’ll tell ’em all you know and invent more when you run out. But them clockwork bastards don’t know pity, nor compassion neither.
Think no one in this flash house would spot for that crackpot Philosopher? Think again. Everyone’s got a weakness—be it liquor, gold, or worse—and the Royal ain’t afraid to play it dirty.
Which puts me in mind of Remy Lafayette, who could’ve shopped us a dozen times if he felt like it. I conjure him at the Tower, stripping skin from some screaming fey bleeder while he smiles that sunshine smile, and I’m maudlin and dark-tempered all over again.
The landlord—a friend of mine, so he is—waves at me from behind the copper-topped bar. I shoulder through a gang of grotty Welsh navvies, who rain me with what I ken to be curses in their soup-thick dialect. One leers and flings gin over my skirts. I kick him, and he vomits on his boots. Christ, Welshmen really do eat anything.
I hike my skirts knee-high to step over, and at my side, some bloke whistles in admiration. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that ought t’be criminal.”
I don’t look. I just ram my elbow to where his smart-arse whistling guts should be.
But he grabs it, strong fingers pinching. And all of a moment, I’m stumbling into a fire-dark corner. “Get off me, you pinchdick slapper!”
He winks as he lets me go, tipping tinted specs. Flashy, like a sideshow magician or a seller of snake oil. Long green coat, bowler hat, blond curls.
Moriarty Quick.
What in hell is he doing here? How’d he find me? Were it he I heard, dogging our every footstep in the fog outside Eliza’s house? Look at that innocent, lost-puppy face. I’ll warrant it gets him petted by all manner of unsuspecting misses. It followed me home, Mama, can I keep it? But I can smell his night’s entertainment on his breath
(I could murder a whiskey)
and his eyes—green or hazel?—are disturbingly glassy in the firelight. Unblinking, like Mr. Todd’s serpent.
Quick sucks in a juicy eyeful of my cleavage and licks those cupid’s-bow lips. “This is a sweet change, Dr. Jekyll. I dreamed of what you’d be like inside”—he sniggers at his own joke—“but I never imagined this.”
My nerves seethe, rats in a bag, and my steely sister thrums against my ribs, hungry for blood
. He KNOWS. Kill him now . . .
“Up here, maggot.” I slap his chin to shift his attention. “You’ve mistook me for somebody else. Now clear off, before I chew your balls into pie meat.”
“Told y’I know who y’are.” That Dubliner’s sing-song is stronger now he’s drunk. “C’mon, let’s talk. You’ve not even asked what I want.”
“Did I never?” I frown. “Oh, right. I don’t give a rat’s arse. Now piss off.” Roughly, I push by.
But Quick shoulders the wall, cornering me. “I can help you, Lizzie Hyde. Didn’t y’ever long for your own life?”
He knows my name. He KNOWS.
My fingers twitch, darkly eager. Stab his scrawny neck. Lick his blood from my palms. End his meddling . . . But my mouth waters, too, bittersweet, and curse it if I don’t hesitate like a coward.
“I know a thing or three about forbidden pharmaceuticals,” Quick adds, inspired seeing as I ain’t yet killed him. “Shall we say, the shadowy side of chemistry? And I know that you”—he prods a drunken forefinger into my bare shoulder—“could use your own preparation. To favor you over the other, if you catch me meaning.” His fingertip lingers. Drifts lower.
I catch his meaning, all right.
My own elixir. My own life, to do what I want, and to hell with Eliza’s restraints. Jesus, my legs are shaking. I want it.
“Fuck off, you glocky sot.” I swat his hand away, but he darts in, that serpent a-strike. Now my elbow’s smarting again in his grip, and I inhale his strange flavor, whiskey and acid and dark alchemical threat.
Ugh. I’ve rarely wanted less to touch a man. He ain’t a dead loss in the looks department, and I’m partial as the next girl to that canny Irish lilt. But the feel of his skin—scaly and cold-blooded, somehow, though it ain’t—makes me wriggle, a chilly whisper of beware.
Something’s wrong with Moriarty Quick. Something evil.
A knowing wink. “Did y’ask Finch about me? What’d he say?”
“Don’t know what you’re jawing about.” But I falter, spooked. Do NOT engage with that man, Finch’s scrawl implored. I’m beginning to wish I’d listened.