Sweet Songbird

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Sweet Songbird Page 25

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)


  ‘What has that to do with me?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Unless he thinks that a girl walking alone from the Song and Supper Rooms might have some information as to the whereabouts of his old friend Luke Peveral.’ He let that sink in, added softly, ‘He’s a very unpleasant man. With some very unpleasant mates. I don’t think you’d enjoy meeting them.’

  ‘Why should they bother with me?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ The words were heartfelt. Despite the cold she flushed. ‘Do you want to go off on your own and find out?’

  She shook her head.

  His teeth gleamed in the darkness of his face. ‘Then it’s the plank after all, I’m afraid. Or the night spent camping here.’ He held out his hand. She took it. It was warm, and rock steady. The smile glimmered again. ‘That’s the ticket.’

  She followed him, the sweat of fear freezing upon her skin, over the narrow, bouncing plank and then on into a maze of foul-smelling alleys. They moved in silence. Once they stopped and he drew her close to him in the shelter of a doorway, his head cocked, listening. Quite close by someone coughed, the despairing emptying of consumptive lungs. Luke relaxed, guided her around the heap of rags that huddled in the gutter and pushed on. Quite soon after that the fog thinned a little and she found herself recognizing landmarks. They had made a wide sweep and were approaching her lodgings from the Whitechapel direction. The fog, though lightened a little, still hung about them in a noxious curtain. Luke strode confidently on, not slowing his steps to hers. She scurried beside him, cursing beneath her breath the great swaying bell of a skirt that hampered her every stride. She did not see his smile. At the door of her lodging house he stopped and faced her. She became suddenly aware that their hands were still linked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘if you were frightened. It was probably for nothing. I’ve been known to jump at shadows before. But better safe than sorry.’ He still held her hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He smiled, inclined his damp dark head and was gone.

  And she was left reflecting not on the bizarre and frightening events of the evening but on the treacherously pleasant recognition of the warmth in his usually guarded eyes as he had smiled at her, and the disturbing feeling of his hand in hers.

  Chapter 4

  (i)

  Two days later, Luke Peveral – and Kitty – discovered that Nemesis had indeed been lurking in the fog that night. But the first person that it overtook, as the yellow murk still lay upon London’s dirty rooftops and crept along her narrow streets, was Spider Murphy.

  Kitty it was who found him, sprawled upon her brother’s bed, at first sight apparently once again drunk as a lord and dead to the world.

  Then she saw the blood.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She ran to him, stopped, appalled at the unrecognizable, purpling mass that was his face. She stood for a moment, her hands pressed tightly to her mouth, quelling nausea. The little man muttered, the words indistinguishable, bleeding tongue lolling on all but toothless gums in a wrecked mouth. His right arm was twisted grotesquely by his side. His clothes were in shreds. There seemed to be no part of him that was not bruised or bloodied. One eye was swollen shut, the pupil a smeared gleam between the puffy lids.

  ‘Spider – for God’s sake! – what’s happened?’

  Her voice roused him. He caught her hand with his left one, half-lifted himself in agitation. Blood and spittle streamed down his unshaven chin as he gabbled. He stank of blood and urine and worse.

  ‘Don’t try to talk. Lie still. I’ll get help.’ She broke away from him, fled to the door. Where was Matt? Or – Pol! Blessed thought. Pol would know what to do.

  She flew up the dark, narrow stairway, burst into the room that Pol and Lottie shared. ‘Pol, quickly! Something awful’s happened to Spider! He’s in Matt’s room. He’s hurt! He’s bleeding – oh, please, come and help—’ She stopped.

  Pol, unflustered, untangled her plump, bare legs from the crumpled bedclothes, ran her hands through her bright, tousled hair and reached for a dirty robe. ‘Gawd, gel, where’s yer manners? Didn’t anyone ever teach yer ter knock at doors?’

  ‘I’m sorry—’ The words were, in the circumstances, perfunctory. The memory of Spider’s shattered face overrode all other considerations.

  The naked man at Pol’s side – stocky, dark and hairy as a gorilla – struggled to a sitting position and grunted angrily.

  ‘S’all right, love,’ Pol said to him soothingly, ‘it’s a friend o’ mine.’ She stood up, belting the crumpled gown about her heavy, lush body, raised only half-amused brows at Kitty. ‘This’d better be good.’

  ‘I’m – I’m sorry, Pol, truly I am – but – Spider’s in an awful state. He’s been beaten half to death from the look of it – oh, please, do hurry – I came to see Matt, but he’s off somewhere – and Spider – he’s bleeding so badly—’

  ‘All right. All right.’ Pol’s voice was steady and sensible. ‘I’ll come down an’ take a butcher’s. Oh, fer Gawd’s sake!’ – this to her irate, hairy swain who, in a picturesque state of arousal, had swung his bare feet onto the floor and was complaining bitterly and forcefully at this interruption to his pleasures. ‘I’ll be back. Keep it warm for me.’ She ushered Kitty through the door. Kitty almost fell back down the steep stairs. When the two girls reached Matt’s room it was to find that Spider had somehow dragged himself from the bed and was crawling across the floor to the door.

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ Pol said with feeling, ‘you bin arguin’ with a bloody steam roller or somethin’?’

  Spider gargled in his throat, his one eye desperate.

  ‘’Ere – give us an ’and ter get ’im back on the bed—’ Pol and Kitty struggled to lift the little man. Spider fought them every inch of the way, still trying to get to the door.

  ‘Spider, for God’s sake!’ Kitty was terrified to touch him, in case she hurt him more. ‘We’re only trying to help you—!’

  ‘Ellerguvner,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Guv – ner.’

  ‘Yes. What about him?’ Unpleasant things were happening to the hairs at the back of Kitty’s neck.

  He stopped struggling. His small, fearsomely strong left hand gripped hers, his one good eye was fixed upon her face. His damaged mouth simply would not obey him. It was agonizing moments before, with a superhuman effort, he enunciated, relatively clearly, ‘Warn – him—’

  Kitty’s stomach, already queasy, shifted again. ‘Warn him of what?’ She did not want to warn Luke Peveral of anything. She did not at that moment want anything to do with Luke Peveral ever again. She did not want anything to do with anyone or anything that could reduce a man to this bloody, dehumanized pulp.

  ‘They know – where ’e is.’ Blood bubbled, pink and frothing. There was another long, struggling silence. ‘I – told – ’em. They’ll – skin ’im. ’E don’t know—’ He could not go on.

  ‘Shut yer mouth.’ None too gently Pol hauled him almost single-handedly to the bed. ‘You tryin’ ter kill yerself? Kit – we need some rags. An’ some clean water. Be still, will yer!’ This, furiously, to the struggling Spider. ‘’Ave I got ter tie yer down?’

  He was still holding on to Kitty’s hand. His one eye was pleading. ‘Tell – ’im! They’ll – kill ’im!’

  ‘How can I? I don’t know where he is!’

  He pulled her to him. Revolted, she put an ear to the bloody cavern of his mouth. ‘Church,’ he said, and shook her. ‘Church!’

  ‘Yes – I know the church – at least—’

  He pulled her close again. ‘Rope.’

  ‘What rope? Spider – what rope?’

  ‘Bell—’ He gave an odd, bubbling sigh. His eyes closed. For a second it seemed that he had stopped breathing. Then ‘Go,’ he whispered, and ‘Go!’ he screamed, terrifyingly, with the last of his strength.

  She was horrified. She stood, trembling, looking at the unconscio
us body.

  Pol sat back on her heels, looking at her. ‘You goin’?’

  ‘I – no! I can’t!’

  Pol glanced at the gasping Spider, then back at Kitty.

  Kitty shook her head. ‘Pol – how can I? It’s nothing to do with me – I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go—’

  ‘Yer can see the church across the canal from the Rooms.’

  ‘I know. But—’

  Pol looked back at the bleeding, recumbent figure. ‘’E worked awful ’ard ter get ’ere. I s’pose ’e was lookin’ fer Matt to ’elp ’im warn Luke?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ What had Luke Peveral risked, to see a girl home through the foggy darkness, when he could himself have been safe off the streets? ‘Pol – I can’t go, can I? Not alone—’ She hesitated. ‘Would you come with me?’

  Pol shook her head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well then—’

  ‘You’re right. To ’ell with Luke Peveral. ’Elp me with Spider—’ Pol leaned forward. Kitty stood one moment longer. Spider moaned, turned his head, opened one bloodshot eye and fixed it in entreaty upon her.

  ‘All right,’ she heard herself say. ‘All right. I’ll try.’

  * * *

  She regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth, and as she hurried through the familiar, gloomy streets towards Blind Lane at each step she was on the point of turning back. How was she supposed to find Luke Peveral with only the sketchy information Spider had passed on? What was she to tell him? Supposing he wasn’t there?

  Supposing someone else was.

  That last thought gnawed like a rat in her mind. The men who had so brutally maimed Spider would surely not waste time in getting to their real quarry? How long had it taken Spider to get to Market Row? She lifted her skirts, half-running. She must be mad. She must be!

  The amber sky was weighted to the rooftops by the fog. The light, such as it was, was yellow, as if the world were sunk below the evil waters of a sulphurous sea. People hurried past, heads down, collars up, hands deep in pockets. The whores in the doorways, their lacklustre charms muffled beneath ragged, threadbare shawls, watched her go by with disinterested eyes. She turned at last into Blind Lane. As she had expected at this time of day it was deserted. The far end of the alley, where lay the canal, was swathed in evil, ochre-coloured fog. She was running in earnest now, heart pounding, breath rasping in her chest. And while the question still hammered her – why in God’s name was she doing this? – yet she knew, remembering Spider’s smashed face, the anguish in his one eye at his betrayal of Luke, that there could be no turning back now.

  She reached the canal. There was the path along which Luke had led her two nights before, and there, a little way along, hidden by a corner, the plank. And across the water, almost lost amongst the smoke-blackened, mostly derelict buildings, she saw an ancient, squat grey tower with a boarded-up belfry of rotten wood perched upon it. If Pol were right, this was Luke Peveral’s unlikely hideout.

  She had to stand for a moment, regaining her breath and trying to control the trembling of her legs before she started across the perilous bridge. A short way downstream the decomposing body of a dog moved sluggishly in the water, set in motion by God knew what disgusting agency. The stench was vile. She edged carefully out along the unstable plank, swayed dangerously for a moment, threw herself forward and in an awkward, scrabbling dash was over. She scrambled up the bank, heedless of the mud and the clawing brambles. In the alleyway beyond she hesitated. Which way? She could no longer see the church. The alley in which she stood, a bare few feet wide, ran ahead between towering, sooty walls for perhaps fifty yards, and then met another running at right angles across it. She flew to the corner. Stopped again. The church had seemed to be to the right – she turned right, ran for perhaps a hundred yards, only to find herself in a cul-de-sac, dark and well-like beneath high, blank-windowed warehouse walls. Panic muffled her heartbeat. Despite the cold she was uncomfortably hot, and sweat channelled, prickling, down her back. On a doorstep a child sat, half-naked in the cold, face vacant, thumb stuck in a mouth that was rimmed with running sores.

  ‘The church?’ she asked him. ‘Is there an old church near here?’

  He stared at her, neither moving nor blinking.

  She turned and ran back the way she had come. A raw-boned dog, scavenging in the squalid, streaming gutter that ran down the centre of the cobbled alley, joined happily in the game, tail wagging. Unable to avoid it, she sprawled in ungainly fashion upon the dirty ground, grazing her hands and banging her knee painfully enough to bring the rise of tears. Helpfully, the dog climbed all over her, licking her face.

  ‘Get off! Get – off – me!’

  She scrambled to her feet, dashed a scratched and dirty hand across her face. The choking smell of human refuse rose from the foetid gutter. She ran again, turned left and found herself in a wider lane. In a jumble of rooftops she glimpsed the belfry. Her heartbeat slowing a little, she hurried on, turning corners, followed her nose, losing the landmark of the tower, finding it again – and then, suddenly, there it was. Turning a corner she found herself in a dark, narrow lane, one side of which was formed by a great, windowless grey wall. In the wall was a single, arch-shaped wooden door. She craned her neck. Silhouetted against the grim yellow sky was the derelict belfry.

  There was no one in sight.

  Heart thumping, she approached the door. Gingerly pushed it open. ‘Hello?’

  Her voice sounded frail in the cold silence. Her heart sank. This could not possibly be the place. She was standing in a vast, gloomy porch, shadowed, silent, bitterly cold. The dirty wooden ceiling high above her head was hung with cobwebs, the stone walls gleamed, chill and damp, the place smelled of abandonment and neglect. Apart from the door through which she had entered there were two others – a big one, facing her, which obviously gave on to the body of the church, and a small one to the right which she assumed led to the tower above. Both were firmly and securely boarded up. In the corner, hanging through a trap in the ceiling, were two moth-eaten bell-ropes. To her left, in the thickness of the ancient wall, was an alcove, ornately screened, which looked as if once held a life-sized statue but which was now empty. That was all.

  ‘Hello?’ She heard the strain in her own voice. This could not, surely, be the place? She had made a mistake. Spider’s warning would not after all reach Luke Peveral, and it was her fault. She stood for a long moment, tensed against the terrible cold of the derelict building, listening. Her knee throbbed where she had fallen, and her hand stung painfully. She put it to her mouth and sucked the sore place. The silence was unbroken, except for the disturbed flittering of wings high above her. The musty, neglected stillness was oppressive. She turned to leave; and as she did so her attention was caught by the faded, coloured bell-pulls in the corner.

  ‘Rope,’ Spider had said and, ‘Bell—’

  Moving slowly she stepped to the ropes. They hung motionless, dirty and threadbare. There were no cobwebs on them. Gingerly she put out a hand and then snatched it away. Metal-tongued giants hung soundless above her, massive in their rotting cages. If she should set them in motion… Her skin crept coldly at the thought. The bell-ropes hung, still as death.

  Rope. Bell—

  Luke Peveral, at possible risk to his own skin, had seen her safe through an unsafe night.

  Bronze monsters waited above to give strident voice to her error – or worse, to burst from weakened bonds and crash down through the rotten fabric of the tower—

  She reached to the nearest bell-pull, then at the last moment changed her mind and tugged the other one, hard.

  Absolutely nothing happened.

  She stood weak with relief and anticlimax. Her heart was thundering in her ears. Absurdly, she was trembling, and though her feet and hands were frozen, sweat trickled again uncomfortably down her back and between her breasts. She waited a long moment. Nothing. No echo of sound, no movement. Emboldened, she reached for the second rope.
>
  ‘I really shouldn’t do that. You’ll wake the neighbours.’

  She nearly died of shock. She spun round, breath choking in her throat. Luke Peveral stood, grinning warily, in the alcove not three feet from her. As she turned, his quick, narrow glance took in her wrecked appearance and his smile faded, but his voice was cool and pleasant as ever as he said, lightly, ‘Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who said “Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead?” Am I right in suspecting that if you are here half of London has found me?’

  She could not for a moment force her voice past her almost paralyzed vocal chords. ‘Something like that,’ she said, shakily.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She took a breath, spoke rapidly: ‘Spider’s at Matt’s. He’s been beaten, terribly. He’s badly hurt. Whoever did it was looking for you, and Spider couldn’t hold out – he told them – he asked me to warn you—’

  The smallest of smiles, warm and genuine flickered and was gone. ‘And so you have. Who of the two of us is more surprised, do you think?’

  She could not stop the small, shaky laugh that brought.

  He stepped to her, took her arm. All traces of levity had vanished. ‘First things first. I want you out of here, and right now—’ He stopped. They both heard it; the sound of running footsteps in the lane outside, a sharp, barking voice.

  Luke moved faster than she could think. He caught her wrist and pulled her into the alcove. Cut at right angles into the thickness of the wall, hidden by the ornate screening that decorated the front arch, was a narrow opening, barely eighteen inches in depth. He turned sideways, slid into it, then held out a hand to her.

  There were other harsh voices now, outside the door.

  She took the extended hand and slipped after him into the shadowed darkness. In a moment she stood upon an ancient-looking twisting stone stairway, winding upwards, dimly lit by high, slit windows.

 

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