“I do, sir. I understand.” And she took a step toward him.
“I doubt it very much.” His perfect lips quirked but he grabbed her wrist and yanked her to his side, the remarkable pistol still aimed squarely at Mary Jane’s head.
“You will do two things for me, whore. Firstly, you will greet my brother in my name. Tell him Renaud Jacobe St. John Lord de Lacey sends his regards. Tell him everything I have done has been for him, a gift from brother to brother. You like the French, don’t you? Tell him, une centaine de putes pour son seul. A hundred whores for his one. Tell him that for me, will you? And secondly, for my bastard son—tell him . . .”
He yanked Ivy very close now, tucked her under his arm.
“Tell him to look for her head under St. Katharine’s dock.”
For a brief moment, the two women locked eyes, and while there was no friendship offered, there was one thing that was deeper, more intimate even than that.
Survival.
“I’ll tell ’em,” growled Mary Jane, moving side to side like a snake. “I’ll tell ’em and they’ll hang you from your neck ’til yer dead, they will.”
“Au revoir, petite putain.”
And he backed out of the alley, dragging Ivy with him. They were instantly swallowed by fog.
MARY JANE RELEASED a long, shuddering breath, wiped her face with her sleeve. She looked over her shoulder, fought off the tears and the helpless fury, looked back now in the direction the killer had gone, dragging the young writer with him.
She was alone in the lane. It would be easy to slip away into the crowds of London, seek lodging elsewhere in the city. She could even find haven back with her relations in Ireland or Wales or disappear entirely across the Channel in the teeming streets of Paris. It would be so easy.
She raised her chin, just a little.
She turned and bolted back in the direction she had come.
RUPERT CLOSED THE door quietly behind him, turned the skeleton key that had been left in the lock, and slipped it into his pocket. He had found Remy’s medical bag squared beside the neatly folded clothes, decided it would be best not to leave it for the police. He did not look inside, however. The unfortunate girl looked like she was missing some parts, and he didn’t want to see more than he already had tonight. And so he stood just outside in the gaslight and released a long breath, waiting for his nerve to return.
He had witnessed a scene like that only once before in his life. It was remarkably similar, in fact—the bed, the blood, the organs moved with great care around her body. Yes, remarkably similar, with the exception of the boys. He would never forget the boys. One lying as dead on the grass three stories down, the other fragile as a porcelain doll in the middle of it all. He would have died had it not been for the boys. They had needed him to live, and so he did. He would have killed himself that night had it not been for the boys.
Life, it seemed, was a mutual thing.
He turned and strode from the lodging, laying a hand on his nephew’s arm.
“Let’s go.”
Together, the men headed out under the long narrow archway that led to and from the yard. The fog was still thick, as the smoke from the countless chimneys sank to hover over the ground. It smelled of rotting eggs and made him glad they were not out for long tonight. Once in your lungs, the Pea Soup was a bugger to dislodge.
They made their way back down Dorset, past the many lanes, alleys, and narrow streets that rabbited this old part of the city. Finally, they spied Castlewaite and the coach parked nearby on Shepherd. There were a few carts as well, no steamcars at all, and the street was quiet as a tomb.
Which, of course, it was.
With his own mask hiding his face, Castlewaite was huddled in a blanket on the dickey seat, and he stirred at the sound of the dogs whimpering from within. He pushed the mask up onto his forehead.
“Aw, there y’are, sirs,” he said, climbing down to the cobbled street. “And Miss Ivy? Where’s she at, then?”
They slowed as the realization sank in. Sebastien stopped but Rupert continued to the coach. He took a quick glance inside, through windows fogged by dog breath. He straightened.
“Damnation.”
He passed the medical bag into the coachman’s hands and turned, looking over at his nephew, who was watching from the curb. Saw the gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes, the locket that beat a strong steady rhythm like a heartbeat. He felt his own heart break for both his boys. Damned the fascination with the arcane that had plagued his family for generations. It killed them every time, just as it was killing them now.
Sebastien would do it. He only had to ask. He would call on that accursed clockwork locket, lose himself in the blackness of the spirits, and die just a little bit more. He would do it if asked. He would do it in a heartbeat.
“Laury,” he began. “I think you need . . .”
But Sebastien had turned his head away, cocking it like a dog hearing a faraway sound. Presently, Rupert heard it too, footsteps running hard down wet cobblestones, and soon a figure in dark velvet and woollens appeared in the fog, blonde curls damp and weighed down by the night.
“’E’s got ’er,” Mary Jane panted, and she grabbed Rupert by the hand. “Come on, quick now. To the river!”
And she pulled him off his feet and together the three of them headed back into the fog.
IT WAS A terrifying thought that in such a modern age a man could still drag a woman around the dark streets of London undisturbed. Then again, this was the East End. There was more crime on one street in Whitechapel than in the rest of the city combined. Union Jack. Saucy Jack. It was all the same in Whitechapel.
He was taking her through the back lanes and alleys toward the river and she knew that he was taking her to the docks, where he had told Mary Jane Kelly that he would take off her head. He was an expert in the streets, knowing when to pull her in close like lovers on a late night stroll, knowing just when to pause to avoid the click of an automabob or the sweep of a copper’s pocket torch. He had slipped the mask down over his face, so he would be unrecognizable in either event, and the sight of him with huge green-goggled eyes was terrifying.
St. Katharine’s Way now, and she could smell the water as he led her, could hear it as waves lapped against the hulls. The cables of huge cranes creaked in the breeze and bells from moored ships carried across the water. The fog was lifting over the river and she had a clearer view of the sheds, shanties, and warehouses that littered the piers. She wondered if he was searching for a secluded spot. The quays, she reckoned, were a good place for a murder, but honestly, not so good for dismemberment.
“I would like to speak to Christien,” she gasped. “Please, sir. May I speak to Christien?”
“Shut up, girl,” he growled, voice hollow through the mask. “Or I will take out your tongue right here, right now.”
“You are about to do far worse to me, sir. Why shouldn’t I ask?”
He swung her around and brought the pistol up very close to her eyes.
“Because you hope, girl. Because if I cut you now, then you know for a fact how it ends and you don’t want to believe that. And so, you hope.”
She swallowed, knowing it to be quite true.
He turned and yanked her off her feet once again.
The sound of their boots had changed, so she knew at some point they had exchanged the cobbles of the Way for wood. Wood meant the pier, the shantytown that was the dock and her death. So very near the place where her brother had died and her mother had stayed. She could smell tar and coal and the sharp tang of iron, and she wondered if there were shipsmen still at work on the docks at this hour. And there it was, the faint flicker of hope that someone might be around to come to her aid. But she needed more than a willing longshoreman or dockworker.
She needed a miracle.
He was dragging her between the cranes that unloaded the ships from Spain, Portugal, the West Indies, and the Caribbean. To her left, the basins and the docks, the Ivory House, full
to brimming with tea, feathers, shells, sugar, and rugs. As they neared the door to the engine-works house, she noticed an iron bollard with an inscription—St. Katharine by the Tower. She had seen these bollards before, had once told Davis the story of St. Katharine of the Wheel, a young martyr who was forced to choose death by beheading or death under a massive iron wheel. While Renaud’s blade was most certainly sharp, she sincerely doubted it would take her head off in one go.
Their boots clanged as they crossed the gangwalk over the canal toward the engine-works house. Inside, massive steam engines pumped thousands of gallons of water for the locks and the basins. There were oars leaned up against the walls, captain’s wheels on the ground, buckets. Her mind spun as she thought about using something, anything, against him.
Suddenly, he froze and she could hear footsteps echoing on the pier. She spied the shapes of three people in the darkness, picking their way over the ropes and cables as they moved across the quay. Her heart gave a little leap as she realized that Mary Jane had not abandoned her after all.
Renaud pulled her in close, slipped the mask up onto his forehead once again.
“Which one shall I kill first?” he whispered. “My brother, the bastard, or the petite putain?”
She swallowed. In the distance, she could see the lights of the locket flashing across the faces, across the water, across the pier. It was like a beacon, calling a ship to shore.
“Yes, you’re right. The bastard, I think. He’s the dangerous one.” He looked down at her, smiled. “He is a crackerjack shot, don’t you agree? Does he have an iron with him?”
“Christien, hear my voice. Stop this. Please.”
Renaud lifted the pistol in his gloved hand, cocked the hammer, took aim.
“My . . . bastard . . . boy . . .”
Her eyes flicked once again to the oars.
His finger moved across the trigger.
THE LOCKET WAS spinning madly, flashing lights across their faces, across the water, across the pier. Sebastien paused as, one after another, figures began to appear from the damp night air. Silver figures of mist and shadow taking shape before him. Women and men, some familiar, some not, all dead and very angry.
“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . Good lord, Rupert,” he moaned. “How many has he killed?”
“I don’t know, Laury,” said his uncle. “Ren wasn’t in his right mind for years.”
The Mad Lord narrowed his eyes past the shantytown of wooden planks and sheet metal to the dark silhouette of the engine-house. “He’s there . . . Right in there . . . I can feel him . . .”
And he raised his palms to the dark sky. Snowflakes began to circle and bend.
“No, Laury,” said Rupert, and he reached for his nephew. “Not here. It’s too exposed. I don’t like—”
Suddenly, there was a cry from the shanties and the sound of wood hitting bone.
Rupert lunged into Sebastien as a pistol shot broke the quiet of the night, and both men staggered.
One went down.
“YOU LITTLE WHORE!”
The pistol swung in a savage backhand, sending her into the side of the engine-house with a thud. Lights were popping behind her eyes as he hit her again with the pistol, and again, until she dropped the oar and fell to her hands and knees onto the wood of the pier. She heard the pistol fire a second time, and then a third, before it clattered to the planks. She fumbled for the oar, caught it again, but his heel stopped her wrist, immobilizing her like the women of Seventh had done. Her ribs caught fire as he kicked her then, ribs and belly and chest, and it was difficult to draw breath. There was no light at all now, and she tried to scramble away but he caught her easily, and she felt him twist his fingers into her hair. He yanked her head up, bending her neck so far back that she felt as if it would surely crack.
It was difficult to breathe and she tasted blood on her tongue, and then a blade pressed into her throat.
MARY JANE SCREAMED as the second shot bored in through the fabric of her skirts, slicing open the flesh of her thigh. Sebastien grabbed handfuls of fabric, hauling them both out of the path of the final shot and to the cover of a nearby longshoreman’s shed. The planks immediately grew dark underneath.
The young woman pulled herself to Rupert’s side, began to fumble with his bloody shirtfront, but he stopped her, taking her wrist in his hand. He looked up at his nephew.
“Go, Laury . . . Stop him . . .”
“Rupert?”
“I’m fine. See? Just a scratch. Jolie Marie will tend me. I could not be in better hands. Now go. He’s done his three shots. Save them if you can, but stop him.”
The Mad Lord glanced at the young woman. She nodded, so he rose to his feet, the locket whirring and sending sparks now up into the sky. He stepped around the dock, palms upward, and winds picked up as the frost began to descend.
“Homines e mulieres qui laesi sunt, nunc est ultio vestrum,” he murmured. “Accipite spiritum huius hominis et dimittite innocentem intra.”
As he began to walk forward, ice crackled along the planks, up the bollards, and down the chains of the dock. Boats in the nearby water groaned and rose, hulls buckling, as the mighty Thames itself began to freeze.
“Homini e donni qui sunt laesi, nunc et ultionem vos. Accipere spiritus hoc homo et dimittere innocens intra.”
Ropes and cables snapped in the winds now and even the rooftops of the sheds began to peel and sway. Figures which, only moments before, had been but shapes of mist and fog, began to solidify, forming arms, legs, torsos, and finally faces out of the frost, until there was a mob of ghostly white marching with him along the quay. It was an army now, of flesh and bone, skin and ragged cloth.
“Homini e donni qui sunt laesi, nunc et ultionem vos. Accipere spiritus hoc homo et dimittere innocens intra.”
An army of the dead.
“DAMN HIM TO hell!”
Suddenly, she was on her feet. The cold had rolled over them like a wave, and she could not stop her teeth from chattering. Renaud, too, was feeling it, for his body was shivering and his breath frosted the hair at her ear. The edge of the knife was burning with cold, creating blisters on her skin, and he hauled her to the door of the engine-house, swinging it open and shoving her inside. He bolted the door behind him.
At their feet was a spiral staircase, gleaming black in the dim gaslight, and she could hear the hiss and hum of the steam engines that operated the locks. He dragged her down after him, her boots clanking as they scuffed against the metal. Soon they were in the basement, and he dragged her toward the golden glow of the engine room.
Underground, once again.
Two massive steam engines flanked the room, their drums, cylinders, and pistons chugging like trains on a track. Two great, geared flywheels—each as large as an ox—drove the engines, and she was certain that a grown man could stand up straight within the cylinders had they been still. Steam was collected in long copper tubes to be reused in the pumping process that raised and lowered the canal to the level of the river. Still, with the heat from the roaring twin boilers, water dripped from the ceiling and formed rivers of its own across the concrete floor.
To her dismay, the only dockman manning the boilers was an automaton and it swivelled as they entered.
“Security code?” it droned, its eyepieces whirring with its attempts to identify them. Renaud released his grip on her, strode up to the robot, and efficiently twisted its head from its shoulders. The head bounced on a few wires, which he cut with the blade. It dropped to the floor with a clang. He turned to her and smiled.
“Your turn.”
She bolted, diving between the engines, searching for something, anything, that might prevent what was rapidly becoming her fate. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him lunge in after her, but she was small and quick and far less elegant than he. The flywheel rattled and hummed alongside her, creating friction of its own, and she was grateful that she was not wearing skirts. One slip—of a lock of hair, a lace, a slee
ve—one small misstep could cause her to be pulled into the machinery and crushed in a heartbeat.
Like St. Katharine of the Wheel, she began to pray for a miracle.
She could see him dogging her behind the great iron gears, moving through the machine-works like a stalking cat, but in his pursuit, he left the way to the stairwell open. With a deep breath, she slipped out from under the drum and rushed for the stair. She managed to make it up the first three steps before he was upon her, dragging her back down again. Still, she kicked at him, striking his chin, his shoulder, his chest, before he caught and wrenched her ankle so that she heard something snap. She lunged forward now, clawing at his eyes, ignoring the pain as his blade opened red slices in her arms. Finally, he slammed her head into the metal rail and once again, lights popped behind her eyes. It was all the opportunity he needed.
Dragging her from the stair, he spun her around and tugged her in tight against his body. His right hand clapped over her mouth and, through a haze, she saw the knife flash in the gaslight and closed her eyes.
HE PAUSED AT the door to the engine-house, at least two dozen dead pressing in on him from the air. He was not surprised to find it bolted, so he reached out the tip of a finger to draw a circle on the metal, leaving a slick of ice as it went. A star within it now, and he placed fingers onto each point.
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti . . .”
He raised his other hand to cup the locket.
“Amen.”
THERE WAS A moment when everything changed and the hand dropped away from her mouth.
“Ivy?” said Christien.
Chapter 46
Of Physics, Metaphysics,
and the Opening of the Clockwork Locket
SHE DREW IN a breath and then another and another, grateful for the sweet sensation of air filling her lungs. She breathed until, from the damp concrete floor, she looked up at the man who only moments ago had been trying to kill her.
Cold Stone and Ivy Page 44