The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  “You’re a selfish young pig!” she roared at him. “Your dad’s got nothing for his breakfast except tea!”

  “What?” said Charlie. “I done nothing!”

  Lucy noticed he was keeping her and the bucket between him and his mother. She didn’t blame him. Mrs Pyefinch held the iron pan cocked and ready to fling, and her overall air of competence made it look like she’d be a good shot.

  “You ate all the bacon and eggs,” she retorted. “Unthinking hoggishness is what that is, come here!”

  “No fear,” said Charlie with a smile. “I’m staying here. Besides, we didn’t eat it all. There was plenty left in the basket.”

  “The basket’s empty!” she said, her eyes seeming to see Lucy for the first time. “Good morning,” she said, more like a threat than a greeting.

  “Hello,” said Lucy.

  “We’ve already met,” said Mrs Pyefinch. “You trod on my arm on the way out of the tent this morning.”

  “Sorry,” said Lucy.

  “Yes, well,” said Mrs Pyefinch. “You have to be careful in tents. I thought you were French.”

  “Well, she isn’t,” said Charlie. “No more than I’m hoggish. There was bacon and there was eggs left enough for a breakfast for you and Dad, and that’s a fact.”

  “It is a fact,” said Lucy.

  Mrs Pyefinch looked from Lucy to Charlie and shook her head sadly.

  “Fact or no fact, there’s no bacon and your dad’s striking camp on an empty stomach. Now hop to and give your dad a hand. You know the drill,” she said, turning away. Lucy looked at Charlie.

  “You can come with us, I expect,” he said cheerily.

  “No useless mouths, Charlie,” said his mother without looking back.

  “She’ll be useful at something,” he shot back, winking at Lucy. “Won’t you?”

  Mrs Pyefinch turned and looked at them.

  “You a show-person?” she asked. “Gymnast? Horse rider? Patterer? Sing-a-bit-dance-a-bit girl?”

  “No,” said Lucy.

  “Any skills at all?”

  Lucy shrugged. Mrs Pyefinch shrugged back at her.

  “Then sorry, my dear, it’s harsh, but it’s been a year of short rations and less money jingling in everyone’s pockets. But look on the bright side–a night’s shelter and egg and bacon for breakfast isn’t a bad bargain for nothing, is it?”

  “No,” said Lucy. “And thank you for it.”

  Mrs Pyefinch looked like she wanted to say more, but she just nodded and turned away with a wave.

  “Come on, Charlie, daylight’s a-burning and we need to be gone.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Charlie. “She’s just always worried about money and things have been a bit tight. She’ll change her mind.”

  “No,” said Lucy, looking at the woods beyond the encampment. “It’s all right.”

  Lucy watched Charlie shrug and walk away with a smile and a wave of his own, and then turned away into the cool shadows of the wood.

  She was gone for maybe twenty minutes but by the time she emerged the camp was reduced by at least half. All the tents were down and the wagons were bumping over the hummocked grass out onto the smoother going of the high road. There was already a good line of them dwindling into the distance away from the campsite. It was, in its own way, a kind of race. She saw some wagons bouncing along the grass beside the road, trying to get ahead of slower carts which had struck tents earlier, and the sounds of whips cracking and good-natured railing between carters, who clearly knew this game and enjoyed it, filled the air.

  When Lucy got to where the Pyefinches’ tent had been, there was nothing but crushed grass and a lump in the turf where the square, which had been lifted to build the fire in, had been replaced and stamped down. Wagon tracks led towards the road, and Lucy followed them, weaving a path through the remnants of the camp. An old man who was tying his tent onto the back of a dilapidated cart turned and watched her as she went.

  “How much?” he said, pointing at what she carried in her hands.

  “They’re not for sale,” she said, and walked on. “They’re payment.”

  Once on the road she saw that all the wagons were different, but she had no idea what the Pyefinches’ looked like, so she jogged past each one, turning to look at the drivers and families sitting on the driving bench as she went.

  Tired faces looked back at her with no recognition and not much interest, except for a couple who again offered to buy what she had in her hands. Then she came round to the front of a particularly weather-worn wagon and saw a tall man hunched in a blanket that hooded his head sitting next to a girl who was flicking the whip at the rear of the horse with a frustrated snap. The girl looked at her and nudged the man.

  “There, Father. That’s the girl. That’s the one the Pyefinches found.”

  It was Georgiana, and her beautiful eyes looked coolly at Lucy in a way that made her feel clumsy and awkward. She was conscious of her muddy boots and the blood on her hands. This made her angry, because she was not used to worrying about her appearance. She didn’t like the way Georgiana, who was sitting on a wagon that looked as if it still carried the dirt of every thoroughfare it had ever travelled on its sides, still managed to appear somehow regally above and beyond the grubbiness of the road she was sharing.

  The man’s eyes looked out from beneath the cowl of the blanket: they were blue, like Georgiana’s, but watery and sad. His face was partly hidden, but didn’t look like a wizard of any kind, thought Lucy, certainly not a “Great” one. He looked beaten, and his hand, which emerged to point at her, shook. Lucy saw the other hand held a green bottle which she took to contain the liquid that was the cause of the rheumy eye and the trembling hand.

  “She has rabbits,” he said in a voice that was doubly surprising. It was a deep and gentle voice, and it was also a cultured one.

  “Yes, Father,” said Georgiana. “Fat ones.”

  Her eyes had dismissed Lucy and returned to the road.

  “Perhaps she would give us one. I am very fond of rabbit stew,” he said.

  “No, Father. We want nothing of her. You have already had good bacon and eggs for your breakfast,” said Georgiana, cracking the whip.

  Lucy looked at her, but got no more than the side of her face. So she jogged on. Nine wagons onwards, she saw Charlie sitting on the back of a cart, his legs dangling over the bumpy road. His face split in a grin and he called over his shoulder.

  “Ma. Look what we got for dinner!”

  The gap in the canvas behind him opened and Mrs Pyefinch looked out. Lucy trotted behind the wagon, holding both hands up, showing the four fat rabbits she had taken in the wood.

  “For the breakfast,” she said.

  Mrs Pyefinch looked at her for a long beat, then her face cracked in a smile which was the mirror of her son’s.

  “Where’d you get ’em?” she said.

  “Took them in the wood,” said Lucy.

  “And there was you saying you had no skills!” said Mrs Pyefinch. “Well, pull her aboard, Charlie; don’t just leave our new friend in the road!”

  And with that she disappeared back into the wagon.

  Lucy tossed the rabbits onto the tailgate, and then took Charlie’s hand and jumped aboard.

  “Well,” said Charlie. “Now you done it, girl.”

  “Done what?” she said, getting comfortable next to him.

  “Run clean off and joined the circus,” he grinned. “No telling what’ll happen to you now!”

  CHAPTER 37

  THE DROPPED MASK AND THE DEAD CITIZEN

  It was a good thing for Issachar Templebane’s digestion that he had not been able to see Mountfellon in his carriage as he drove away from their meeting: the moment the door was clapped shut and he was alone, he had discarded the anger that had clouded his face as easily as a carnival-goer drops a mask, stretched back in the seat and smiled.

  He was still smiling as he exited his carriage and entered his house on Chando
s Place in the west of the city, a handsome Georgian building whose windows were glazed in opaque milk-glass for privacy. He did not notice the Raven finding a perch on the crest of the roof of the house opposite. It had followed the coach easily as it had wound its way west through the City and on past the dangerous jumble of Seven Dials and the equally illfavoured rookeries of St Giles until it had turned north into the more civilised streets of Marylebone.

  Mountfellon walked through the hall and on through the long ballroom behind it. He descended the stone stairs to the basement and knocked on a door.

  “Entrez, Milord,” said a voice from within, faint and scratchy as a dry nib on parchment.

  Mountfellon entered another long room, at the end of which was a very old man in a sea-green coat sitting at a desk snowed under with papers and books. The collar of the coat was tall enough to brush his ears, and his face was lined and twisted like a walnut. But the eyes which looked back at Mountfellon were made young by the incorruptible thirst for knowledge that blazed out of them.

  Behind him was a cage.

  “Good day, Citizen,” said Mountfellon.

  It was a peculiarity of their relationship, which was one of equals, that the old Frenchman called Mountfellon “Milord” whereas Mountfellon called him “Citizen”, the peculiarity being that though both used the words in irony, neither resented it.

  “Well?” said The Citizen. “Do we have the key?”

  Mountfellon was a man of many secrets but his partner, the hidden resident of Chandos Place, was the deepest secret of all: The Citizen was the reason all the windows were opaque, for he was not just old–nearly ninety by Mountfellon’s reckoning–but he was also dead. He was not dead in the sense of being a mysteriously reanimated corpse, he was merely dead in the eyes and mind of the outer world. That world was convinced that he had died a long time ago, publicly and incontrovertibly separated from his head by a guillotine, itself an ironic fate for a former Jacobin and beheader of kings and aristocrats.

  Mountfellon never called him by his real name. He was just The Citizen.

  “The key is a stratagem for the foolish by which they seek to draw out those who covet their secrets,” said Mountfellon. “It was a lure, as you conjectured. The key is not a key, I am almost certain of it.”

  “And the girl?”

  “The girl is gone. She did not succeed.”

  The Citizen betrayed no interest in the fate of Lucy. He just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Tant pis. And were you sufficiently foolish?”

  Mountfellon smiled.

  “I was very foolish and very haughty and very convincingly angry. Issachar Templebane thinks me a perfect aristo, blinded by arrogance and a so thoroughgoing dupe, and The Oversight is now, I would say, aware of me.”

  “Good,” said The Citizen. “We shall teach them a thing or two about luring and the long game. And now what shall you do?”

  Mountfellon was collecting paper and pens and brushes from a bureau.

  “And now I shall be very industrious for the next few days. We may not have grasped the Blood Key but all was not a failure, for I walked into the great treasure house of The Oversight with my eyes open, did I not?”

  “Indeed. You may have seen things of great power whose purpose we do not yet understand,” said the Citizen. Mountfellon nodded.

  “It would be a crime against science and rational thought were I not to catalogue them while they sit clear in my head before the freshness of recollection passes. And you, my friend, your strength is still on the wane?”

  The Citizen shrugged.

  “I have an arrangement for the full moon, the same I engaged in before I came to this country. If the rendezvous is kept, my vigour shall be quite recruited as before. I shall then make the creature an offer to remain here permanently.”

  “A wise precaution,” said Mountfellon, smiling without mirth. “And your studies are deep enough to keep your mind from the pain, I trust?”

  The Citizen tapped a book in front of him and jerked his thumb back towards the cage. On closer inspection it appeared to contain a naked man whose skin was green. His mouth was gagged and he lay curled like a dog on the floor.

  “I have been reading Denys’s monograph on blood transfusion again,” said The Citizen. “I would still be interested to see what would happen were we to swap blood with one of them one day…”

  Mountfellon took his equipment and headed for the stairs.

  “One day, Citizen, one day. And we will get to that day one plan at a time. I must go and work.”

  And with a half bow he closed the door behind him, leaving the dead man to his studies.

  CHAPTER 38

  TWO CROOKED HOUSES

  Mr Sharp did not seem surprised when Hodge and The Smith appeared at his shoulder in the dripping shadows of the alley in which he was sheltering from fine drizzle while observing Templebane’s house. He had heard the creak and clatter of Hodge’s dog cart drawing up at the rear of the alley behind him, and he knew that Hodge was able to talk to the Raven over long distances. It was an unusual ability which he took quite as much for granted as he did his own capacity to turn people’s minds or move exceptionally fast and unnoticed through the world. He was relieved to hear the noise because he wanted, more than anything, to get back to Wellclose Square and see how things lay with Sara. The double shock of losing her hand and having strangers force their way into the Safe House under cover of Law was insupportable, and he felt a cold mixture of anger and concern in his gut that he was wholly unused to.

  “You took your time,” he said shortly. “How is Sara Falk?”

  “As well as one could hope, considering,” said The Smith. “Whose house is this?”

  “A lawyer,” said Mr Sharp. “The man who came into the house with the magistrate came here directly, and then, after a short interview, left in a hurry. The Raven followed him. I stayed here.”

  “The Raven is outside a large house in Chandos Place,” said Hodge. “The man has gone in and not emerged. The windows are shuttered and barred.”

  “Then you find out who he is and watch him,” said Mr Sharp. “I must go back to the house. I do not like the idea of leaving Sara and Cook undefended.”

  “Cook is never undefended,” said The Smith. “And you’d do well not to ever let her suspect you think that you’re defending her. Who is the lawyer?”

  “I was just going to find out,” said Mr Sharp, “before leaving.”

  “I will do it,” said The Smith. “I can see you wish to be elsewhere.”

  Mr Sharp nodded and turned to Hodge.

  “You went to The Three Cripples?”

  Hodge nodded.

  “And Ketch?” said Mr Sharp.

  “From what I gathered from the tapster, he’s a regular and a sot–and here’s where it gets strange–never had a child or a woman, not like he said he had.”

  Mr Sharp looked at The Smith.

  “The man Ketch—” he began.

  “I was told all about him,” said The Smith. “If Sluagh were abroad in the city, who’s to say that his mind had not been worked on?”

  “So the girl was planted on us,” said Mr Sharp. “So there is a plot.”

  “There’s a something,” said The Smith. “My eels are disturbed. As I said to Sara and Cook, the wolves are circling.”

  He looked across the street.

  “Lawyers are kin to wolves, I hear. You go back to Sara. I think I shall go and see who we have here. Hodge—”

  “Chandos Place,” said Hodge. “I’m on my way.”

  Mr Sharp nodded at them both once more and sped off towards the river.

  “I do not envy whoever is responsible for injuring Sara,” said The Smith. “But I do not like the heat in his eyes. He has a capacity for violence which he has always kept strongly under control. Keeping it under control, indeed, is what has made him a valuable member of The Oversight. Were he to unlatch that control, I do not know if he would be able to come back to us.
Nor whether we should want him.”

  “I’d trust him with my life, and Jed’s,” said Hodge. “Cold and haughty as he can seem when he’s preoccupied-like. Trust him with any of our lives, come to that.”

  “Yes,” said The Smith. “But can we trust him with his own?”

  Hodge shrugged, whistled Jed to his heels and jumped back in the dog cart.

  “Too deep for me, Wayland,” he said, cracking the whip lightly and jolting into motion. “You fathom it if you can.”

  Coram heard the knocking on the main door of the building, and hurried to answer it before it became so loud and persistent that it woke his Night Father.

  He opened the door to find The Smith standing there, a somewhat unexpectedly rural figure in the midst of the city in his caped oilskin coat and high, heavy boots. A farmer, perhaps, thought Coram, and then found himself stepping back reflexively to avoid being barged to the floor as The Smith stepped out of the rain inside the shelter of the hall without being asked. Definitely a farmer or some species of rustic, for he had outdoor manners, Coram concluded.

  “Help you, sir?” he said with a superficially engaging smile.

  “Sorry to trouble, but I understand this is a lawyer’s office,” said The Smith in an uncharacteristically querulous voice, as if unsure of his status and right to be knocking on so fine a front door. “I am in need of a man of legal knowledge.”

  “Ah,” said Coram, his smile impregnable. “I’m afraid my fathers do not take approaches from prospective clients at this time, being more than oversubscribed.”

  “But I had been assured that this was the office of Mr George Chapman Esquire, Attorney at Law, and that he was highly amenable,” said The Smith in confusion.

  “Ah,” said Coram, looking distastefully at the small pools of rainwater collecting on the hall floor as The Smith’s oilskin shed the share of the external deluge that it had brought in with it. He would get Amos to mop it up, he thought, and then remembered Amos was still abroad. His smile curdled into a scowl. He would have to get the mop himself. “And therein lies the hinge on which the misunderstanding turns, my dear sir. These premises are not Mr Chapman’s house, nor have they ever been.”