by Louis Bayard
—Here comes the chopper to chop off your head.
And as his face inclines towards mine, his voice drops into the lightest, sketchiest of whispers—a tone so insinuating I could mistake it for the promptings of my own conscience.
—Don’t be like your friend now. Go quiet. Come now, go quiet.
Ah, Gully. Was it like this? Was he whispering in your ear, too? Could you feel his breath on your eyelashes?
—Shhhhh. Shhhhhhhhh.
Behind me, the custom house’s wormeaten wood crackles and crunches against our combined weight. I remember now what it was I was thinking when I was wrapped round the chimney, directly above. I was thinking: The whole thing could give way any moment.
And that’s when I realise that my hand—my other hand—is curled round the downspout.
Only the fingers, though, are capable of movement, for Rebbeck has the rest of my arm pressed against the house, and he will no sooner release it than he will loose the blade that now hovers two inches from my throat. And so I instruct myself to do the thing least expected: to go limp in Rebbeck’s arms.
And the moment my weight begins to drop, Rebbeck’s knife draws away, and his free hand grabs me under the arm, and all his homicidal intent is shouldered aside by a perverse chivalry, as he devotes himself to the task of catching me—so that he may better kill me.
But now my right arm is free, and I am tugging with all my main on the drainpipe, and it pulls clear with only the smallest protest, and I swing it straight in the direction of Rebbeck’s head. And in that instant, my own eyes squeeze shut, as though I were the one being struck, and when I open them again, Rebbeck is standing back a pace, his eyes unblinking, and I swing again, and this time there is no mistake. The blow hurls him straight into the house, and rather than rebounding against it, he drives straight through in a crash of splintering wood—nearly disappears inside—until there is nothing left but a pair of inert, protruding legs.
Around us, a battery of new sounds is gathering. The squeals of girls have been superseded by the shouts of men…loud whistles…the crunch crunch of indistinct shapes hustling through the snow. Indistinct, only because my eyes remain fixed on that pair of legs. I watch, with a detached fascination, as they jerk back into life and then, after a space of perhaps half a minute, crawl back into the courtyard, dragging with them the attached torso and, after that, the stunned, hatless head.
Blinking madly, breathing hard, Rebbeck steadies himself against the house’s shell and hoists himself to a nearly erect position and stands there, with a look of wavering concentration. And yet some native tenacity is still at work in him, for he is gripping the blade all the more tightly, and he raises it one last time…higher…higher…
And then, behind him, the shadows part to reveal a tall, reedy figure scurrying soundlessly through the snow…raising a long, spindly club…no, a walking stick…and, with one short, decisive blow, sending the former Sergeant William Rebbeck into the final station of unconsciousness.
Leaning over Rebbeck’s incumbent form, the figure murmurs:
—Oh, Willie.
And then he takes a step towards me.
I press a hand to my temple. I fall back.
It is Detective Inspector Surtees.
—So nice to see you, Mr. Cratchit.
I open my mouth to reply, but my astonishment is too great for words, and it is all the greater because Surtees is behaving as if we had just encountered each other in Leicester Square.
—I am delighted, Mr. Cratchit, that we were able to arrive in time. You’ll pray excuse the delay, it’s rather difficult to get men assembled on Christmas Eve.
And now my eyes, sharpening in the wet, stinging air, at last pick out the familiar blue swallowtail coats of the Metropolitan Police, weeding their way through the rocketing girls and Lord Griffyn’s harried staff. One constable lays a firm hand on Miss Binny’s arm; two of his fellows collar the mud-caked gondoliers.
And for each new figure I decipher, another emerges, equally distinct, from the miasma. Colin, still panting, gazing round the corner of a tenement. And Philomela, weaving through the lines of girls, raising her lantern high, like Diogenes.
Oh, yes, all of us present and accounted for. All but one.
I spy him soon enough: a shrouded shape absconding down the shoreline. A black Inverness cape melting into the night.
Not a word of explanation do I utter. Slipping past the outstretched arm of Surtees, I elbow my way through a circle of policemen and make straight for the river.
—Mr. Cratchit!
Surtees’s voice slows my gait not a whit. Nor does the searing in my knee: I simply run through it, as though it were a set of hurdles placed at every step along the way.
A pretty picture I must make, dragging that wretched leg after me, but as I leave the shadow of the custom house, my exertions are rewarded with a second glimpse: Lord Griffyn, his cape hitched to his waist, dashing along the river’s shore.
The margin is narrow, though, and the way is not even, and being without a light, he must pick his way more carefully than he would like. As I chase him down, I find I can read the path most easily by watching him—by noting where he pauses, where he stumbles, where he tests his footing. And in this way, I quickly close the distance between us.
Can he make out the sound of my boots? Or is there some deeper, subtler sense at work in him, some voice that spins him round and confronts him with the spectacle of me, this whirlwind of righteousness? The sight blows him right back round again. His feet scrabble in the snow. No caution in that tread now, no canvassing of the terrain. Escape is the only remaining principle.
—There! Him!
And here was I, thinking I was the only pursuer. I should have expected Philomela to be right behind. But when I look back, she is still hovering by the custom house, engaged in the altogether different work of sounding the alarm.
—He go! Stop him!
Failing to elicit a response from the police, she grabs two of the girls by their rags and points out Griffyn’s receding form. Then grabs two more, actually spins them on their heels. I understand now what she is doing: whipping up a mob. A mob of ragged, unruly, hysterical ten-year-old girls.
How quickly they take to the work! All it requires is a couple of well-timed shrieks from Philomela and, finally, the stern finger of Colin, pointing like an arrow at Griffyn’s fleeing back, and they have taken up the chase. Girl after girl, all screeching like goblins, sprinting down the foreshore and ripping up the earth as they go.
They are a terrible sight, ravening and near blind with rage. And seeing them in turn emboldens me so much so that, as I run ahead of them, I seem to draw out all their rage, all the combined puissance of the Metropolitan Police, and I know I will chase this man as long as I have legs, as long as there is ground to run on.
And so I draw closer…closer…the distance between me and Griffyn melts away…and from behind us, the screams of the running girls pepper our ears. They, too, draw closer.
And yet in Griffyn, some hope of reprieve must still lurk. He gladdens—visibly gladdens—at the sight of Gully’s boat, pulled up on the shore. He would make an offering of thanks, I think, if he had the time. But now he must haul the boat back into the water for rowing, he must leap in and steady himself and seize the oars. And because the water is still too shallow for rowing, he must dig the poles straight into the river bottom and propel himself into the current.
And all this costs him time. Precious time. He is only eight feet out by the time I gain the shore, and I need but take a few long strides into the water to be within leaping distance.
Frantic now, he gropes under his cape and prunes out a revolver—a far more elegant specimen than George’s, but how little that matters to me now. Griffyn’s trembling hands point the barrel, his quivering eye draws the bead, and still I come on—charging through the water, pushing it before me—until my target is at last within reach, until I am soaring through the air, wings flapp
ing, beak pointed, and there is no longer any denying me. A mere thing like a pistol drops away, and when at last we make contact, there is only the meeting of our two bodies: an enormous concussion, followed by a moment of pure weightlessness.
The next thing I’m aware of is the tide, drawing us ever farther from shore, and Griffyn’s body, pressed against mine. Two equal wills in a single boat, fighting each other to a standstill…and around us, only frenzy. Shrill cries and splashing limbs, as one by one the girls quit the safety of the shore and beat a white path towards us. The tide itself recedes before them; the boat rocks with their agitation. And as I force Griffyn onto his back, as I climb atop him, I feel the boat suddenly tip as the first girl boards.
It is her will, finally, to which I yield. Out of sheer deference, I fall away, and before Griffyn can make a move, she is upon him—four feet of bone and muscle, demonically magnified to twice that size—pounding his chest, scratching his patrician face, tearing the pomaded brown curls right out of his scalp.
It is conceivable, just conceivable, that Griffyn could repel one such attack, but within seconds, another girl has pulled herself over the side, and another right behind, and each new arrival throws herself on his recumbent form, taking up where the last left off, and before long, Griffyn has vanished beneath this heaving carapace of bodies. No longer screaming, these girls; no, they are far too intent on their work, and the only sounds that reach me now are the muffled thuds of their tiny fists and boots and the stifled groans of Lord Griffyn.
—No. Please. You mustn’t.
That’s me speaking. I am preparing to explain to them all about the British system of jurisprudence, the importance of law and order…but these girls are having none of it. With a look poised between outrage and glee, one of them hurls herself straight at my chest. In a daze of surprise, I fall back as the boat slides out from under me.
And now I am thrashing in black water…the Thames is shouting in my ears…ice scalding my skin. A prickle of terror crawls up my scalp, and I open my mouth to scream, and then I feel my hands closing round the lip of the boat. Quickly, I haul my head above water, and I bob there in the river’s lap like a buoy—a privileged viewer of what is playing out just three feet away.
By now, more girls, a full brace of them, have clambered on board—the boat sinks lower and lower with each new weight—they rip his shirt, pluck out his hair, pummel his groin, kick and punch and slash. One of them has even climbed onto his chest and thrust his head, his bleeding and terror-struck head, over the side and into the water.
Around this head the water forms a quick, shimmering column. Half a minute…another half minute…and the rocking in his body subsides, and then the head…
Goes still.
Like that.
So. This is how a man passes. After all the protest and panic, just the faintest shudder and then nothing.
And now the husk of Lord Griffyn shoots from the boat like a wad of snuff and follows a plumb line straight to the river bottom. And as it goes, it performs one act of posthumous violence. It tips the already foundering boat with its cargo of girls—tips it and finally upends it.
And as the boat turns over, my hands slip free of its rim. And now I, too, am following the plumb line.
Swallowing down my panic, I grasp for anything, anything—a piece of hull, the North Star—but the tangible world has slipped far out of reach. My head struggles to stay free, but the fennish black water climbs ineluctably upwards, smearing my mouth, sliming my ears, crawling into the deepest caves of my sinuses.
Somewhere inside me, I hear Gully’s peeved voice:
Whyn’t you tell me you couldn’t bloody swim?
Because…because…
The cold binds my arms to my sides. I drop…a fathom and then a little more…the black water surges and roils round me, more violent than I could have imagined, buffeting and winnowing me and…and perfecting me. My temples push inwards, and my eyes surge outwards, seething with pain. Excruciating, this pressure, and yet it carries the additional mercy of nullifying itself, so that all memory of it disappears instantly. There is pain and then oblivion.
And still: the absurdity of it! Drowning in perhaps ten feet of water. With a good dozen people close at hand. A bubble of laughter bursts from me, and with it a belch of black muck. My heart slows to a dull, thudding lurch. My lungs swell and spike. Needles of ice drive through my brain.
All the same, there is comfort here. For is this not the old dream? The dream I first had as a child. Once again, the killing sap is rising through me. Once again, the feeling drains from my hands, the air from my chest. The heart thumps loud enough to wake the dead. Yes. Yes, the old dream at last—after so many interruptions—reaching its conclusion.
And what a surprise! Not a dream at all but an architectural plan. Here…now…the final touches on the edifice of my life, falling into place.
And all sorts of people are rushing to congratulate me. There’s Sam! And Mr. McReady. Belinda and Jem. And Mother, too, moving quite expertly through the water, a matronly mermaid, with a pair of redoubtable fins.
And right behind her…who but Father? No better a swimmer than I, and yet look how easily he navigates. Doesn’t even need to move his arms and legs, just cuts through the water, like a boy on a greased pole. Smiles that shy, placating smile. Cups his hand and beckons to me.
Home, Tim. Go quiet.
Chapter 25
THE GRAPPLING IRON. That was the specific means of my escape. Gully’s final gift: a fierce black hook, attached to a long strand of iron hoops, dangling over the side of the boat and catching round my leg. My lifeline.
My second lifeline, I should say. The first was simply an agitation in the water above me. I knew immediately what it was: the paddling of human feet. I knew also to whom the feet belonged; I knew why they were there. And so I went to them—wrapped my hands round the grappling iron and hauled myself up from the river bottom, towards those two paddling bodies. towards the claims of a new family.
There was, in this arc, an undercurrent of regret that lingers with me still. And yet I cannot question the impulse, any more than I can question being born. It simply was. A predicate only, with no direct object.
These, anyway, are the thoughts that crowd in on me, many hours after the events in question. It is Christmas Day, bless you, and I am spending it, for the time being, in the office of Detective Inspector Surtees. We are seated by a rather tentative fire—the first fire this hearth has enjoyed in some time, it is clear. My host, discomfited by the intrusion of warmth, has absented himself to the far side of his own office and left me his chair, and so here I sit, with my legs stretched out, grateful for every speck of heat that comes my way.
Only now is the chill beginning to leave my bones. That it has not taken up permanent residence, I owe to the labours of the stationmaster’s wife, who padded me down with blankets and kept the fire raging round me all night long. My second station-house stay was a far cry from my first. I slept for hours—days, possibly—and when I awoke, I was still at liberty, and there was a plate of devilled grill and kidneys on the table next to me. And before I left, the good stationmaster’s wife insisted on lending me a starched white shirt of her husband’s, two sizes too small, and by way of compensation, a pair of startlingly roomy woollen trousers, in one of whose pockets I found a drawing of a naked woman straddling the branch of an elm. The clothes I’ll return, but I’ve half a mind to keep the drawing. Even now my fingers worm their way towards it, while the rest of me hearkens to the dry, high voice of Inspector Surtees.
—Well, the rest of us had quite lost sight of you, I’m sorry to say. But the boy and the girl, dear me! Never let you out of their bearings. As soon as you dropped, they went straight after you. Quite a willful pair of beasts, aren’t they?
He totters on the heels of his boots, jangles the coins in his pockets.
—Oh, and I’ve had the most fascinating talk with the girl. Wouldn’t say a word at first, but c
ame round in the end when I mentioned how much I admired you. Had to quite lay it on, I’m afraid.
—Sorry.
—D’you know how she did it, by the way?
—Did what?
—Escaped the dreaded coffin.
—No…I never—
—Oh, it’s too degradingly fascinating, it’s the stuff of cheap fiction. One grows quite religious contemplating it.
—How’s that?
—The rosary beads, Mr. Cratchit.
—I’m sorry?
—You noticed them, I daresay. Rather chapped and altogether squashed in sections? Well, there’s a very good and particular reason they are chapped and altogether squashed in sections, Mr. Cratchit. Somehow, in the act of being shut in, she managed to insert the beads between the lid and the box. From there, she was able to pry her way free. You’ve noticed, no doubt, she’s astonishingly good at creating rudimentary levers.
—I have noticed, yes.
—I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Archimedes was one of her scions. “Give me a string of beads and I will…” Of course, this is in no way meant to demean your other confederate, Mr. Cratchit. A most indomitable, an indivertible fellow.
The fire is wasting quickly, and the ashes are dropping fast, and somehow this imparts a new degree of urgency to our conversation. And so, as I rake the few coals still remaining in the grate, I pose the question that has been tasking me from the moment I awoke.
—Have they found his body?
—Lord Griffyn’s, d’you mean? Not yet, no…what with all the melee…and the tides, Mr. Cratchit, you know how capricious they can be. He may wash ashore tomorrow, he may…
And then, unaccountably, he falls silent.
—What’s the matter, Inspector?
—I was only thinking how unfortunate it is that your friend…Captain Gully…isn’t around to help us find him.
—Gully, yes.
—Please do accept our condolences.
—Yes. Thank you.
And with that show of deference, Inspector Surtees slaps his hands on his thighs and pulls himself into an erect position.