Catherine closes her eyes. She’s as pale as the gray stone walls that rise in arched galleries to the vaulted ceiling. Mick rubs his shoulder; carrying my equipment must have made it hurt again. Hugh props his elbows on his knees and rests his head in his hands. He was happy to have survived the exposure he’d always feared, but he probably never thought things could get worse. Self-reproach fills me because I brought this upon us. The area around Great St. Bart’s was once the site of public executions, and it’s said that one can still smell the odor of burning flesh, but I smell nothing except our hopelessness.
“Churches are supposed to be sanctuaries,” Hugh says, “but I wouldn’t want to test the theory if the police were to find us here.”
Mick speaks reluctantly. “We can go to my place.”
#
An early winter dusk, darkened by fog, settles upon the warehouses along the riverfront in Wapping. The Thames gleams with lights reflected from boats. Exhausted by our long hike, Hugh, Mick, Catherine, and I set my equipment at the top of the stone staircase that leads down to the water. This is where I first met Mick, the day he stole my camera, the day I saw Polly Nichols dead in Buck’s Row. On our right, to the east, the Tower Bridge rises; its two Gothic towers seem to hover in the mist. The low tide laps against mud flats that reek of sewage and dead fish. Spectral flames flicker on the flats, where hunched figures prowl.
“It’s just the mudlarks,” Mick says.
The mudlarks are folks who scavenge in the mud for coins and items they can sell that have fallen in the river. I realize that mudlarking is among the “this-and-that” by which Mick earns a living. Now I know why he’s dirtier at some times than others: those were days he’d been digging in the filth.
A loud boom rocks the night, and a gold starburst lights up the sky beyond the Tower Bridge. More booms echo across the city; red-and-white pinwheels rain sparks onto the earth. It’s the fireworks display that ends the Lord Mayor’s Show. We lift our burdens. Mick leads us down the stairs, then past the retaining walls upon which the warehouses rise straight up from the riverbed. Our shoes squish in the mud; I trip on shells, rocks, and debris. Fiddle music and raucous laughter drift from a tavern. After we’ve traveled some fifty feet, Mick stops to yank bricks from a wall. The opening he exposes is about four feet high. He ducks inside, scrambles around, and then there’s a flare of light. Mick emerges with a lantern that he shines into the opening. I see a tunnel whose crumbled brick floor and ceiling are covered with green algae. It leads into blackness that exudes the odors of earth, decay, and sulfur.
“It’s an old sewer drain,” Mick says.
It looks like an entrance to hell. I don’t want to go in there.
“Did I ever tell you I have a terrible fear of dark, enclosed spaces?” Hugh says.
“The coppers will never find us here,” Mick says.
Hugh, Catherine, and I follow Mick into the tunnel. He bricks up the opening and says, “Right this way.”
For some twenty feet, the tunnel slopes upward, its ceiling so low that we crouch while we walk, dragging my equipment. Then it opens into a junction with three larger tunnels, and we can stand upright. The arched brick ceilings and square pillars have a strange beauty reminiscent of a cathedral. The smell of sulfur gas is stronger here, and I hear water splashing. Mick leads us through one tunnel, to a flight of stone steps. We carry my equipment up them, into another tunnel that extends about fifteen feet to a pile of rocks and earth where the ceiling is caved in. Cold drafts whistle through this narrow room. Above a pile of ragged blankets and cushions, crevices in the walls hold picture postcards—the Taj Mahal; the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“It’s very nice,” Hugh says, trying to sound enthusiastic.
“Yes.” It breaks my heart to see how Mick has made a sewer tunnel a home, to think this is the only place on earth that he can call his own and he was ashamed to tell me about it. That such a bright, quicksilver creature should live underground!
“I can make tea.” Mick finds a kettle, a tin of tea, and four mismatched china cups. He lights coals and twigs in a circle of stones, puts a scrap of rusty iron grate on them, then fills the kettle with water from a jug and sets it to boil.
I don’t want to find fault, but I have to ask, “When the tide rises, won’t we be trapped?”
“The water won’t cover the opening till tomorrow afternoon,” Mick says, “and it never comes up this high.”
I can’t bear to think about tomorrow. Sitting on the bed, we drink the murky tea. Mick produces tinned beans and sardines, and we eat them cold, straight from the tins, with bent spoons. They taste metallic and too salty. Mick, Hugh, and I are too hungry to care, but Catherine says, “I don’t like it. I can’t eat.” She flings down her tin and spoon and gestures around the tunnel. “This is awful!”
Mick wilts.
“Catherine. Don’t,” Hugh says.
“I hate it!” she cries. “I can’t bear to stay here.”
She’s voiced the thoughts that Hugh and I share but didn’t speak. We don’t want to hurt Mick’s feelings, but we’re just as miserable in this cold, dank, smelly tunnel as she is.
Mick stands. He brings to my mind a young knight in a fairy tale who has tried to win the hand of the princess by performing heroic deeds, only to learn that they weren’t heroic enough, and so he musters his courage, takes up his sword, and rides off again. “You don’t have to stay here long,” he tells Catherine. “Just until I come back.”
He’s gone before Hugh and I can ask where he’s going or beg him not to abandon us.
39
The tunnel is pitch-dark. River water pours into Mick’s cave. Hugh, Catherine, and I scream as we frantically try to swim out, but the rising tide is too strong. We’re trapped.
I awaken with a gasp. Breathing foul but dry air, I open my eyes to light from the lantern Mick holds. I’m lying on his bed with Catherine, and he’s shaking us, saying, “Time to go.”
Hugh is already up. Lugging my photography equipment, we clamber out of the tunnel. It’s still dark, the river cloaked in fog. We walk along the mud and up the stairs to the embankment. There stands a horse attached to an enclosed wagon. The driver—a big, bearded man wearing a skullcap—grins and beckons. It’s Mr. Lipsky’s employer.
“You went to see Mrs. Lipsky?” I say to Mick.
“Yeah. She sent Leo to get you.” Mick looks disappointed because Catherine, drowsy and apathetic, seems oblivious to the fact that he’s rescued us.
“I could kiss that good woman!” Hugh says. “I could even kiss you!”
I, too, am grateful. “But we mustn’t involve Mrs. Lipsky. It’s dangerous for her, and she’s suffered enough.”
“She wants to help,” Mick says. He and Hugh put my equipment in the wagon. “Get in.”
After a bone-jarring ride, we disembark outside a narrow building. A sign on it reads, Jews Temporary Shelter, with words in Hebrew below. In the lighted doorway stands Mrs. Lipsky. She smiles and brushes off Hugh’s and my thanks. When we’re seated in the warm, clean, plainly furnished dining room, I feel safe from the police; we’ve disappeared into the secret world of the Jews.
Mrs. Lipsky brings us hot, savory chicken soup with dumplings and strong tea. As Hugh, Mick, and I devour the meal, Mrs. Lipsky sees Catherine picking at her food and urges her to eat. Catherine shrugs. Later, while I help Mrs. Lipsky wash the dishes in the kitchen, I tell her about Dr. Poole.
“That monster,” Mrs. Lipsky says, her usually gentle voice sharp.
We rejoin Hugh, Mick, and Catherine at the table. Daylight brightens the windows, and the shelter’s other guests—men, women, and children—troop into the dining room. They speak in foreign languages as they eat. Some leave after breakfast; other Jews come. The shelter is merely a way station. My sense of isolation from my friends persists, as though we’re reverting to strangers bound for different destinations. I’m as lonely as if they’re already gone.
“We have beds for you,�
� Mrs. Lipsky says, “and a place to wash.”
I crave a hot bath and sleep. Mick and Hugh yawn. Only Catherine is wide awake. She gazes morosely across the room at a mother feeding a little boy who is perhaps a year old.
Leo enters the room. “You better look at this.” He lays a handbill on the table.
At the top is the word “Wanted” in big, black type above sketched portraits of a fair, handsome man, a freckled boy, and a plain woman with her hair in a braided coronet—Hugh, Mick, and me—labeled with our names. The message below reads, “The police are seeking these persons in connection with the Whitechapel murders. Anyone with knowledge of their whereabouts is urged to report it at any police station.” Our likenesses are remarkable, considering that the artist must have relied upon descriptions from Inspector Reid, who was apparently rescued from my studio. The handbill is surely his doing.
“These are posted all around,” Leo says, then departs.
The increased gravity of our predicament jolts us all alert. Mick exclaims, “This makes it sound like we did the murders!”
“We’re in a real pickle now.” Hugh’s light tone doesn’t disguise his fear of going to jail and the special horrors it holds for a man like him.
I think of the uproar after Annie Chapman’s murder, when mobs chased innocent people through the streets. Reid has thrown us on the mercy of citizens already whipped into a panic. “The Mile End Vigilance Committee will be looking for us, too.”
“Stay here,” Mrs. Lipsky urges. “Do not go outside.”
Mick, Hugh, and I shake our heads. We can’t stay indefinitely, and someone here might see the handbill, recognize us, and report us to the police. My heart aches with lonely despair, for I know what I must do.
“We should split up,” I say. “We’ll be too easily recognized if we’re together.”
“That wouldn’t solve the problem of where to go,” Hugh points out.
I speak through a lump in my throat. “Your father wanted to send you to America.”
“Bollocks! I’m not leaving you, Sarah.”
“Maybe you can take Mick,” I insist despite my anguish at the thought of never seeing them again. “It would be a fresh start for both of you.”
“I wouldn’t skip out on you if you paid me,” Mick says, adamant.
Their loyalty moves me so much it hurts.
“Besides,” Mick says, “Mr. Lipsky is still in jail. Hugh and I have to help get him out.”
Mrs. Lipsky wrings her hands. She knows that the likelihood of our exonerating her husband has drastically decreased, but she says, “We must protect Catherine from Dr. Poole.”
Catherine silently stares across the room at the mother and little boy.
“Catherine’s not wanted by the police,” Hugh says. “If she goes out in public, she won’t be arrested or attacked by a mob.”
“There is Jewish shelter in Birmingham,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “I send her there.”
I nod, already missing Catherine but glad she’ll be safe. Mick gazes at her as if memorizing her face.
“But I have to be at the theater.” Catherine has ignored most of the discussion. Her manner is petulant. “I’m in the show.” She’s grasping at her normal routine, as though it’s a lifeline that will pull her out of this nightmare. Suddenly alarmed, she says, “What day is this?”
I, too, have lost track of time. I have to think before I answer, “Saturday the tenth of November.”
“The performance last night! I missed it. I’ll be fired!” She begins crying.
Mrs. Lipsky tries to soothe her. Hugh says, “She’s in no shape for a journey. Let her settle down first. In the meantime, we’d better talk over our next move. I’ve an idea.”
Although I’m fervently thankful that at least we’re still together for now, I can’t believe there’s a solution to our problems.
“Let’s make a last-ditch sortie at Jack the Ripper,” Hugh says.
A sad smile twists my lips. He hasn’t lost his sense of adventure, but I’ve lost my faith in us. “How, when we’re hiding from the police?”
“We can’t stay hidden forever. They’ll nab us eventually. Why not put our remaining freedom to good use? Besides, I’d like to accomplish one splendid thing before I say hello to Hades. Wouldn’t you?”
His valiant optimism has buoyed me up during these past months, and in spite of everything, it’s having the same effect now. If his spirits can bounce back after a calamity, so can mine, and I, too, would like to rid the world of at least one Ripper and justify my existence on earth while I still can. “You’re right.”
“Yeah, we should save Mr. Lipsky!” Mick says, then looks thoughtful. “But it’s more than that, ain’t it?”
Hugh and I nod. The whole tone of our endeavor has suddenly changed. It isn’t just about saving a friend or serving any other personal interest. It’s about doing what’s necessary and right, no matter the consequences.
Mrs. Lipsky smiles with relief as she holds the weeping Catherine. She must have been afraid we would abandon her husband to save ourselves.
Disliking to be a wet blanket but not wanting to raise false hope, I say, “We could spy on Dr. Poole, but how long will it be before he attacks more women? We may be caught ourselves before we can catch him.”
“She’s right,” Mick says glumly. “With all the coppers around, he might lie low for a bit.”
Once again, I find myself in that mental territory where fatigue loosens the constraints on my imagination and prudence falls by the wayside. “We could force him to surface.”
“Hah!” Hugh grins. “That creative mind of yours has hatched a plan!”
“I wouldn’t quite call it a plan.”
“Give me an ounce of clay to work with, and I’ll build Michelangelo’s David.”
The famous statue of the naked young man armed with a slingshot to fight Goliath is probably a more apt allusion than he intended. “It will be dangerous.”
“Hell, I’d rather go down in a blaze of glory than sit twiddling my thumbs,” Hugh says.
“Me, too!” Eager with bravado, Mick slaps his hand palm down on the table. “I’m in.”
Hugh puts his hand atop Mick’s.
“You haven’t heard my idea.” In order for it to work, we require something we don’t have.
“We know the water’s cold,” Hugh says. “Best to jump in without thinking first.”
“What’ve we got to lose?” Mick asks.
Mrs. Lipsky lays her hand on theirs. Recklessness overcomes my misgivings; I reach out my hand. The circle around me now seems like a balloon pumped up with hope, daring, and the spirit of self-sacrifice.
“What good is another plan?” Catherine bursts out. “All our plans have just gotten us in a bigger mess!”
Once again, she’s spoken a truth we don’t want to acknowledge. Discouraged, we withdraw our hands even as Hugh says with overemphatic confidence, “This one will work.”
“Stop being silly.” Catherine’s streaming eyes blaze with contempt. “Admit that it’s all over!”
My anger at Catherine is like a hot needle that punctures the balloon. I stifle an urge to smack her—our predicament isn’t her fault. Hugh watches her with a sad, resigned expression—he knows it’s no use telling her to pull herself together the way she told him to after his beating; Dr. Poole’s treatment has broken her. Mick squirms in his chair, distressed by her behavior and helpless. None of us can rally the spirits she’s quashed.
Mrs. Lipsky puts her arm around Catherine. “Come upstairs. I put you to bed.”
“Leave me alone!” Catherine pushes Mrs. Lipsky away. “Stop treating me like a baby.”
Across the room, the little boy throws himself on the floor, drums his fists and heels, and screams. Catherine stares at him, dismayed. “Oh my God.” She touches cheeks suddenly red with shame. “You’re treating me like a baby because I’m acting like one.”
As we behold her in surprise, she shakes herself, squares her sh
oulders, and composes her face in a calm mask. This must be what she does before she goes on stage. It must be what she did before she walked away from her family’s farm and boarded the train to London. There’s a strength in her that Dr. Poole didn’t break.
“I’m sorry,” she says in a wan yet steady voice. “You’ve all worked so hard to protect me, and I’ve been nothing but a bother. Will you forgive me?”
We nod.
“Good.” Catherine’s manner takes on a brisk cheer. “Whatever this plan of yours is, Sarah, I’m in.” She puts her hand on the table.
The element that my plan requires, that was absent a moment ago, is absent no longer. Hugh beams at Catherine and puts his hand on hers. Mick and Mrs. Lipsky add theirs. When I cap the stack of hands with my own, I recall thinking that fate had brought us together to catch a killer. I feel the boundaries that isolate us dissolving with a warmth that’s greater than from the mere pressure of our joined flesh, whose alchemy changes my idea of what a family is. My father and mother are only people I was born to; these friends are my family I’ve chosen.
It’s as if we’ve put our hands in fire together.
40
At ten thirty on this Sunday night, 11 November, I’m riding down Aldgate High Street in Leo’s enclosed wagon, peeking between the wooden slats. The canopies outside the Butcher’s Row shops are rolled up. Rain patters; the fog carries the ever-present barnyard reek. I’m shivering in the cold, afraid the police will discover me, and anxious about whether our plan will work. I hold onto my photography equipment as the wagon turns down Harrow Alley, which angles behind the butcher shops. A gate opens on creaking hinges. The wagon enters, then stops. Its door opens.
Hugh and Mick unload my equipment. Catherine hovers behind them. I step down into a muddy cattle yard. There stands another wagon with an open bed full of stinking animal debris. Along the north side is the back of the butcher shop where Mr. Lipsky worked. In the distance rises the hazy spire of St. Botolph’s Church, shimmering in the rain. I imagine the ghosts of Martha Tabram, Kate Eddowes, Liz Stride, Polly Nichols, Mary Jane Kelly, and Annie Chapman parading around the church.
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