Eye of the Crow

by Shane Peacock

  He loves to watch birds almost as much as people: cardinals, finches, robin redbreasts, magpies, anything. Most of all, he likes to watch them fly. “That’s the one thing they do that human beings wish we could do,” his father often tells him. “We’d all love to fly. It would free us from the bonds of Earth.”

  Sometimes, he’s spotted hot air balloons drifting over the tall buildings and church spires of the city like they’ve floated away from some strange dream of the future. It isn’t truly flying, but it is close. Oh, to be up there!

  Feeling restless, he gets to his feet and makes his way across the square toward the Art Gallery. He walks up the big steps. He feels compelled to come here where he can see so many rich folks. Rich is something he will never be. All he can do is watch and dream.

  He knows that nearly a third of the children in London don’t attend school, and very few go after the age of twelve. Most are put to work or worse. Yet he is still in the cramped National and Foreign Society School on Snowfields Road near the London Bridge Railway Station. Three damp rooms on three floors: one for the little children, one for upper form girls, and a big one for boys. The last is at the top of the stairs with a high ceiling (beckoning you to stare up and drift into a better world), where the masters, monitors, and all the students also gather for assemblies. He has been in school for seven years, his parents insisting that he read better than the others, cipher better … think better. But there is a ceiling on his future lower than the one in his classroom.

  He thinks of his earlier days, in the dirty Ragged School in Lambeth, sitting in one of the many rows at his narrow wooden desk, beside other miserable pupils. He is fortunate to be gone from there. Unlike those destitute children, he at least has some sort of future, some expectations. In the summers he’s helped the old hatter in the shop under their flat, adding what he can to the family income; it was said he did well. He may become a full-time shop assistant some day, a clerk, or a teacher; nothing better.

  “But look at Disraeli,” his father often tells him. “He will be prime minister one day, mark my words. Other Jews are getting places too. They let us sit in Parliament now. It’s 1867! When I was a boy things were much worse.”

  But Benjamin Disraeli isn’t the sort of Jew that Sherlock is, or like any he knows. Those who succeed, like the Rothschilds and a recent Lord Mayor of London, have never lived in the slums of Southwark or Whitechapel; their blood isn’t mixed; their parents haven’t suffered a great fall. In fact, Disraeli comes from a middle-class family and was baptized in the Church of England: his life has been filled with opportunities. And yet the boy recently saw the great man drawn with a grotesquely long nose and caricatured as Fagin in a copy of Punch magazine he found in the streets.

  The boys at school call Sherlock “Judas,” or “Old Clothes,” the name for conniving Jewish street vendors. He is a loner to begin with, doesn’t like to talk: it seems he just reads and thinks. He wears preposterous suits with waistcoats (bought “passed on” at a market), threadbare but as clean as he can make them, his only way to be somebody, though it separates him even more. He’s had a few fights at Snowfields. He won’t give in or let other boys go unpunished for mean things they say. But some still taunt him. They resent his many first-place finishes, his razor-sharp mind.

  One fight still bothers him more than any other. It happened nearly a year ago. The school bully had teased him so mercilessly that he’d challenged the boy on the street. A big crowd gathered. His opponent was a hulking, eleven-stone pure-English lad. Sherlock went down with the first blow, was pounced upon, his thin arms pinned until they nearly snapped on the pavement. The boy spit on him and slapped his face as the others looked on and cheered.

  “’elpless, ain’t you, Judas? Absolutely ’elpless!” cried the boy. “You can rub your grades in our gobs and wear those clothes and take those snooty ways, but you still ain’t goin’ anywhere remarkable. You’re pinned down, you are, like you should be!”

  When the large boy finally relented and climbed off, Sherlock wouldn’t get up. The crowd stood and looked down at him. He lay there, flat on his back on the street, until everyone was gone.

  He’d been absent from school maybe once a week before that fight, but since then his record had drastically declined. He tries to attend: knows he owes it to his parents. But he can’t. Education can get you somewhere, but where has it gotten his father?

  A goldfinch is flying by against the gray clouds. The air has cooled and it looks like rain again. Sherlock is thinking about the murder.

  The new Illustrated Police News is still in his pocket. He hasn’t read much of it yet, just the headline and a few words about Mohammad Adalji. He pulls it out and turns to the second page. There the lurid drawing has been reproduced from the day before.

  The blood. The woman. That crow.

  The story flows onto the next page where another picture of the victim is drawn for the reader. Her pretty eyes look just like his mother’s in the little painting back in their flat.

  The woman’s identity has still not been revealed. He reads on.

  It is an open-and-shut case. There is no doubt that the Arab did it. The police are certain. An old detective named Lestrade is in charge.

  We found him not far from the scene, blood on his hands, a butcher’s knife concealed under his coat. She wasn’t a wealthy woman, but well turned out. This villain must have thought she had money. There are signs that he took her coin purse, though we haven’t recovered it. He must have ditched it somewhere. Remnants were found at the scene. We will talk to him, talk to him smartly. The purse shall be found. And he will swing for this.

  Further down the page Sherlock reads that the Arab’s trial will take place in about three weeks. Punishment will swiftly follow. The clock has begun ticking on Mohammad Adalji’s life.

  When Big Ben strike 5:00, it sounds like a distant gong in another county to Sherlock. He gets up and walks mechanically toward the river. Before he’s gone far he notices that the crows are nearby again. Two of them are flying above him. But then they veer away. He decides to follow. He should go straight home, but something inside urges him to go with them.

  They are flying toward the oldest part of London, the city proper, the area inside the ancient London Wall, where spooky little streets wind around like snakes slithering into stone burrows. It is filled with banks these days, but it’s where the Romans once lived, where the Vikings and Saxon lords ruled, where witches told gruesome tales, and wretched medieval men and women were whipped and tortured in public.

  The crows fly, then roost, and then move on. Following them gives him an uneasy feeling … like he’s with the devil’s birds.

  Where are they going? Where do they stay at night? Usually they find tall trees.

  Before long the Tower of London with its famous prison is to his right down by the Thames. Soon after it slips from sight, the crows start flying lower.

  He is a long way east now, in a working-class area. There are rag-and-bone shops, candle makers, costermongers and their carts everywhere: an immigrant neighborhood even poorer than his own. This wide road isn’t so bad, but down the smaller streets he sees desperate people walking about, many in bare feet, others lying against soot-stained buildings. He sees Jews too, crowds of them, some selling clothes, yes, with long beards and piles of hats on their heads. Languages he can’t understand fill the air.

  There are no gas lamps down these back-ways. Soon the sunlight will grow dimmer; the famous London fog, beginning to settle in, will get thicker. People are rushing home, leaving the main road. He goes by a street named Goulston.

  He shouldn’t be here. Sinister-looking men pass, eyeing him.

  “Easy mark,” he thinks he hears a dusky one in a sailor’s cap murmur to another.

  He keeps his eye on the crows. But suddenly they vanish. They drop somewhere to his left, just a short distance ahead. He is beginning to feel lost. The side streets here seem darker, like wolf dens.

 
He stops at a narrow one … Old Yard … his best guess as to where the birds have gone. There are two shops on either side of the entrance and their upper stories, grim-looking lodgings, are built right across and over the little street.

  He takes a deep breath and ventures down it, his heart pounding.

  It is like being in a tunnel. The sides of the two-storey buildings lean out over the road, cutting off the setting sun. Filthy children dressed in rags crawl out from nowhere, begging with pleading eyes and outstretched hands. Others have lined up their pathetic shoes on the grim, dirty footpaths, hoping for a sale. They smell as if they’ve bathed in cesspools. Many cough horribly, and their skin looks green. These are the sorts of areas where four or five families live in single rooms.

  It is time to leave. Past time.

  But then he spots the crows down an empty alley.

  What are they doing?

  He can barely see them. They’ve landed right on the ground. They are bobbing about on the cobblestones deep in the alley, hardly visible in the dimming light. He looks at the street name on the brick building at the corner. It seems familiar. He isn’t sure why.

  Sherlock hesitates. He is in an area his parents don’t allow him to even go near, let alone enter. He is beyond late. They’ll kill him when he gets home.

  He hears the crows muttering.

  He turns down the alley.

  The wooden doors on either side are boarded up. They look like entrances to stables that haven’t been used for a long time. There is an eerie silence. He takes each step with great care, as if someone might leap out from behind those doors and pounce.

  He hears the sound of caws through the yellow fog.

  Why are the crows on the ground?

  He advances. They don’t move. Now he can almost step on them. They are pecking at something on the cobblestones. He crouches down. The ground is gray, but it looks different where the crows are, as if it is stained … red.

  Then he remembers why he recognized this little lane’s name. He has read it many times in the newspapers over the last few days.

  That red stain is human blood.

  He is standing on the very spot where the woman was murdered!

  VIOLIN LAND

  He runs from the East End with all his might, runs as if he were trying to get away from all the hatred in the world, the brutal ways people treat each other, from whomever it is who murdered that woman.

  In bed that night he can’t sleep. He keeps thinking about the scene in the alley: the black lane, crows pecking at the cobblestones, the blood. He had felt watched, as if someone were standing somewhere in that mist, following his every move.

  Now he feels ashamed. Why had he been so afraid? Would he stand up against evil if he could help? Would he do something? He’s just a boy – a mixed-up mixture of a boy. But what if that Arab didn’t do it? What if an innocent man is going to hang? What if someone is going to get away with something much worse than taunts in a schoolyard … with murder?

  No one is going to do anything about it.

  He rises in the morning with dark circles under his eyes. His mother would have noticed. But she has gone to teach three singing lessons: one in Belgravia, two in Mayfair. His father will leave soon too. He walks five miles to The Crystal Palace every morning, and back again in the evening. He is sitting at their little table, staring blankly while he takes his breakfast, a bowl of porridge and a warm cup of tea in front of him. He wears his spectacles; his old black frock coat is as clean as Rose can make it, his black beard neatly trimmed.

  When Sherlock arrived late last night, he had admitted to his parents that he’d been in central London again (though he didn’t say where he’d gone later). He asked for one more day of freedom and then he’d go to school every day. He promised.

  “Good morning, Father,” says the boy. He looks in their little mirror to make sure his hair is in place.

  Wilber responds without lifting his head.

  “Sherlock. Sleep well?”

  “I did, thank you.” He sits down.

  “I feel that you have a question.”

  His father is like that. He has a sixth sense about everything.

  “Remember we talked about crows yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Wilber’s eyes focus and he looks at his son. “Yes, I do.”

  “You said they were smart,” says the boy, leaning for ward.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “That they were carrion eaters.”

  “Unfortunately. Tends to make folks a little prejudiced about them.”

  “That they can recognize people. What else?”

  Wilber takes his bowl to the shelf. His mind is beginning to shift to his day’s work. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Can they do anything else that’s unusual?”

  Wilber had turned toward the door, but he stops and smiles as he looks back at his son. Lately he and Sherlock haven’t had long conversations like they used to, when he would impart all the knowledge he could to his son, training him to use his brain as his weapon in life. It is wonderful to hear the boy asking questions again.

  “Well, some of my colleagues believe that crows can talk, or shall we say … communicate well.”

  “What else?” Sherlock stands up, and approaches his father. He doesn’t want to eat anything this morning, and intends to go as soon he can.

  “Let me see … they come from a whole family of birds who like shiny things.”

  “Shiny things?”

  “They seem to have fairly well ordered brains and if anything is out of place they are drawn to it. Shiny things stand out. They go to them like magnets.” A slight frown creases his brow. “That doesn’t help their reputation either. They are considered thieves. A little advice to you when in the company of crows, my boy: don’t leave anything of value lying about, or they might just relieve you of it.” He laughs.

  They are silent for a moment. Wilber turns to go again.

  “I’ve read that they’re omens of evil,” says Sherlock.

  His father stops in his tracks.

  “People do evil,” he replies decisively, “not birds.”

  Once Sherlock gets over the river that morning, he keeps north through the narrow streets. As he rounds a corner he notices something moving in the shadows up ahead where a lane leads off a roadway, and then a little army files out, like rats coming up from the sewers.

  His pulse quickens.

  Usually, if he sees the Irregulars, he tries to steer clear of them. They seldom let him pass without some sort of violence, no matter what he does or says. If they catch him far off a main thoroughfare, his chances dim. They seem to hate him. But it isn’t because of his Jewish blood. No, they have Jews in their fold. It is the blue in his veins. They sense that he isn’t from the street, not truly. It is acceptable that Malefactor is so well spoken, after all he is the brains of their operation, has some mysterious past he won’t speak of, and most importantly, delivers what they need in the underworld. But not the half-Jew. He is neither with them nor against them.

  The gang leader, as bright as a new English guinea, knows all about Holmes just by looking at him. It is curious though, Sherlock also senses that somewhere deep in that twisted mind the other boy respects him. The feeling is mutual. The criminal thoughts in Malefactor’s head are always magnificently conceived.

  Sherlock nervously stands his ground. He wants to talk this time.

  They are running right at him. Malefactor stops. He holds up his hand. The army grinds to a halt. There are thirteen of them altogether – their boss likes that number. They dress well, but are dirty and ragged, in a soiled display of soft felt hats, billycocks and caps, graying white linen shirts, and grimy silk neckties, having stolen everything they own – catching young Londoners alone and stripping them bare is a specialty of theirs – that and picking rich pockets. Hangings days are excellent for business. Sherlock has long since detected their backgrounds: seven of them Irish (including both bully l
ieutenants, Grimsby and Crew), two Welsh, a Scot, and two English Jews. Every one of them is an orphan or the child of workhouse parents, raised in rookeries or on the streets. All this is betrayed to Sherlock in the things they say and the way they say them. But their boss, the eldest by at least two years, is different. No child of a rookery speaks like him.

  “Master Sherlock Holmes, I perceive.”

  “Malefactor,” the boy says calmly.

  “You want to talk?” The outlaw can read his mind.

  “It’s about the murder.”

  “That again?”

  “Yes. Any word?”

  “You’ll warrant a major beating if you ask me that one more time.”

  “The Arab didn’t do it,” offers Sherlock bravely.

  “A reasonable guess,” replies Malefactor as he smoothes out his long black coat.

  “Your world can’t be any safer with a murderer on the loose.”

  “He isn’t on the loose,” says the thief without thinking.

  “Oh?”

  Malefactor looks like he’s let the cat out of the bag.

  “Move along, Sherlock Holmes.” He glances over his shoulder toward his little thugs, nodding at Grimsby and Crew, who step forward. They love to beat on their victims, and both carry iron-hard hickory sticks for the purpose. Dark Grimsby likes to talk, blond Crew says little. They grin maliciously at the slender boy.

  “If he turns and walks now, no hand shall strike him,” says Malefactor. The lieutenants’ shoulders sag.

  Sherlock has noticed that the boss’s slight Irish accent grows stronger when he is irritated. The two eye each other. They are both tall boys: skinny with large heads, though the leader has nearly an inch on the half-breed truant, his forehead bulges where Holmes’ is flat, and his eyes are sunken while Sherlock’s peer out. They both have a way of constantly looking about, suspiciously turning their heads – Malefactor the reptile, Sherlock the hawk. Their hair, an identical coal-black, is combed as perfectly as they can manage.

  Malefactor first saw the boy on the streets many months ago and picked him out as different, drawn to him as if he were something shiny. The thug couldn’t resist harassing him, but has yet to allow his followers to truly do him harm.