The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  He licked his lips and stared back at her, his arm clutched tight to his belly.

  “You know my name,” he said.

  “Of course we do,” she said. “We see everything. We are The Oversight.”

  And somehow saying that made her remember herself and she uncocked the gun and stepped back.

  “And much as I would like to decorate the inside of this coach with you, it would be against the Law and the Lore.”

  There was a noise to her right, and she whirled.

  Emmet stood there, dripping wet, his head cocked in a question.

  She inclined her head at him.

  “Better late than never. Put the unconscious one in the carriage with this one, and get them out of my damn square.”

  “Miss Falk,” said Templebane.

  She turned back and looked into the smoked-glass lenses hiding his eyes. He managed a very tight smile at her.

  “I know where you live.”

  She matched his smile: winter for winter.

  “And I you, cunning man. And I you.”

  And without another word she turned and walked up the steps into her house, and closed the door.

  Lucy and Charlie stood in the hall, staring at her.

  Sara sat on the nearest chair she could find, breathing hard.

  “Well,” she said. “My mother always said, if you’re going to make an enemy, make a good one.”

  She tossed the gun to Charlie.

  “You look like a Pyefinch.”

  “Charlie,” he said.

  “Your mother and I were friends once.”

  “That’s what she said,” he replied. “Still are, by her count. And no grudges borne, neither.”

  Sara nodded. She looked stronger now, at least in her body. Her eyes looked infinitely tired.

  “And I expect you carry a blade,” she said. “If blood runs true.”

  She looked at him but her eyes seemed to be seeing someone else.

  She shook her head and looked down at her torn and dirty nightdress. She stood decisively.

  “Right. Down those stairs is a kitchen. Lucy Harker knows the way.”

  “Even if she doesn’t know who she is,” muttered Lucy, looking at the floor, feeling somehow all the more wretched because of how easy Sara and Charlie seemed with each other.

  “I know who you are,” said Sara, voice again like a whipcrack. “I told that toad Templebane, and I’ll tell you both now. You’re one of us. You came back. That was brave. You have a true heart. That’s all it takes; no magic to it, really. And that’ll have to do for now. So you go and get some hot tea going and see if Cook left any soup or cake. I must tidy myself up and get ready. The others will be back before dark and we have much to talk about.”

  And as she walked past Lucy and stepped onto the stairs her hand reached out, and Lucy saw the flash of the join where it had been severed was now a thin silvery line, like a bracelet which had been tattooed into the flesh. Sara touched her arm for an instant.

  “And thank you,” she said. “This house is your home as long as you want it.”

  CHAPTER 72

  THREE BELLS IN THE FOG

  Mountfellon and Coram were navigating blind through the fog, Coram ringing the ship’s bell three times every minute. It seemed to him that they must be far beyond Blackwall Reach when they finally heard the answering triple bell ahead of them in the fog. Mountfellon’s smile was cold as ever, but it was an indication of eager anticipation.

  “Close,” he said. “I feared they would have gone further towards the estuary, and we might have lost them on the wide stretch of water…”

  He leaned forward, alert and waiting for the next ring of the bells. When he heard it–closer now, he adjusted the wheel and aimed towards where the sound came from. This continued for fifteen minutes, slowly gliding blindly through the fog, and then, just as he was beginning to think the sound would never actually materialise into a solid boat, the unmistakable shape of the paddle-launch was revealed by a temporary eddy of air which rent a hole in the surrounding miasma.

  “There,” said Coram, but Mountfellon was already adjusting his steering. Though the fog swirled back and obscured the view, he had seen enough to ask a question.

  “Where was the crew?”

  “I didn’t see them,” admitted Coram.

  The bell rang again.

  “But they must be there, for who would be ringing the bell!” he said with relief.

  There was the sound of a distant splash, like something large entering the water. And then, before they could comment on it, the fog whirled the boat up onto them at the last minute so that Mountfellon only had an instant to yank the tiller and meet the drifting launch side to side, instead of ramming it head on.

  The boats creaked and crunched, and they had to hold on to anything they could grab hold of to stay on their feet. Unfortunately that meant, in Coram’s case, Mountfellon himself. The noble lord looked down on the hands gripping his arm until Coram realised what he had done and dropped him like a hot coal.

  Mountfellon pointed at the launch.

  “Empty,” he said. “Go and see what there is to see.”

  Coram made his way to the grinding intersection of the two boats.

  “Tie her on,” said Mountfellon, “or we shall drift apart.”

  Coram did so, lashing the painter of their boat around the low railing on the paddle-launch. Then he hoisted himself over the paddles and jumped onto the small deck area.

  “Blood,” he shouted. “Blood, by God!”

  “Damn the blood,” said Mountfellon, his head cocked. “What the blazes is that hissing?”

  For an instant he tensed at the thought of the hissing snake that had leapt at his face in the Red Library and shuddered involuntarily, and then the hiss turned into a whistle which rose in pitch until it was painful to the ears.

  On the deck of the launch, Coram looked apprehensively at the steam-engine. Even at two yards he could feel the heat coming off it in waves.

  “It is the steam-engine!” he shouted. “I think—”

  Mountfellon didn’t wait to know what Coram thought, nor did he consider warning him as he sprang to the side of the boat, shucked a blade from the wrist scabbard beneath his coat, and slashed the painter in two.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Coram in shock, seeing the boats part as Mountfellon jumped back to the controls and began to steer away.

  And then the whistling became a shriek so high-pitched it hurt to hear, and some atavistic impulse of self-preservation made Coram dive headlong into the water as the boiler on the motor launch exploded.

  Mountfellon was hit by a section of funnel and knocked into the water beyond his boat, which yawed away on the tide. By the time he resurfaced and shook the effects of the stunning blow out of his head, it had drifted too far away to be swum to, and a moment later was lost in the fog.

  Mountfellon swam towards the wreck of the paddle-launch.

  Everything was gone down to the water-line, the force of the explosion having been so great, and by the time he was within a couple of strokes of pulling himself aboard, it gurgled once, shuddered twice and then–disobligingly, in Mountfellon’s frank opinion–sank in three short seconds, revealing Coram splashing and grasping for air on the other side as he endeavoured to keep afloat, a skill he was clearly not in possession of.

  Mountfellon trod water and looked at him with eyes as chilly as the ruffled water between them.

  Coram dropped beneath the surface and then bobbed up again.

  “I am drowning!” he gasped.

  “To elect not to learn to swim is not a rational choice in a world full of water and uncertainty,” said Mountfellon, keeping his distance.

  “SAVE ME!” shrieked Coram, going under for the second time.

  Mountfellon waited until he struggled to the surface again.

  “What good would it do me?” he said, kicking away from Coram’s frantically outstretched hand.

  “I W
ILL BE YOUR MAN!” shouted Coram. “I KNOW MY FATHERS’ SECRETS, CAN TELL YOU THEM. I KNOW WHY—”

  And he went under for the third, and traditionally last time. Mountfellon, though of a conservative bent by birth and in many ways a natural traditionalist, in this case flouted convention by reaching beneath the water and pulling Coram up into the air. He held him at arms’ length to avoid the commotion as the younger man fish-mouthed for breath and coughed up substantial chunks of Thames water, and then yanked him nose to nose.

  “Swear you are mine and will be my spy in your fathers’ house,” he said, “or the blasted eels may have you.”

  “Not my real fathers!” coughed Coram. “Am a foundling. Am a poor orphan child.”

  “Don’t give a tinker’s damn what bitch whelped you; you will swear to be mine or your next breath will be nothing but river!” hissed Mountfellon.

  “I swear!” sobbed Coram, broken. “I swear I will be your man.”

  “Then stop snivelling like a girl,” said Mountfellon, grabbing his collar and rolling him on his back. “This, I now apprehend, is a long game, and The Oversight has not bested me in anything other than a temporary fashion. Your damned fathers have much to answer to me for this day…”

  He kicked for the riverbank.

  “Yes,” Coram blubbered. “Oh yes. They are the very devils…”

  “Just plain devils,” corrected Mountfellon. “You will find we come in all shapes and sizes, and I assure you there is no greater devil for loyalty than I, boy. Cross me and I will have you skinned and displayed, you hear me? Skinned, pinned and displayed.”

  Only he and the Thames heard Coram sobbing as they made slow progress toward the unseen edges of the great Greenwich marsh on the wrong side of the river.

  CHAPTER 73

  THE PARTING GLASS

  Things happened quickly once Cook, The Smith and Hodge returned from the river. Sara met them as they came in and told them everything that had occurred in their absence. Cook did a great deal of blowing her nose and wiping her eyes when she saw Sara had been reunited with her hand, and they all were vocal about how restored she looked. They had taken advantage of their stop at The Folley to put a soothing poultice on Hodge’s eyes and bandage each other’s wounds, and so looked a very piratical and chopped-about crew indeed. Of the fighting they said nothing, other than that it had been bloody and brief.

  They were much more interested in her recovery.

  “When we set out you looked like you were in a shroud and six days dead,” said Cook. “And now look at you!”

  Sara was again dressed in slender black riding clothes, a tight coat and an oiled silk overskirt, her rings winking on top of her gloves, and her hair, which had looked an hour earlier more like a half-blown dandelion, was now tamed and pulled tight to her head in a thick white plait.

  “Quite yourself,” said The Smith approvingly. “Just as you should be. And where are the two of them?”

  “In the kitchen,” said Sara. “And since there are two of them, I have some proposals. The first of which is that I think we might impose on Emmet and ask if he would go back into the river and at least retrieve the Wildfire.”

  She looked round at them.

  “Of everything we have put out of harm’s way beneath the water, it is the one that would be better kept close.”

  “If there is a Hand to guard it,” said The Smith wearily.

  “And take its power,” said Sara.

  “You are suggesting we make up our number with one of these young people?” said Hodge.

  “They are not children,” said Sara. “They are both close enough to twenty. And they have true hearts.”

  “Why is it, Sara Falk, that whenever you say you are making a proposal it ends up sounding as though it is an order because you and you alone have made your mind up?” said Cook, her chin jutting dangerously forward.

  “Because I am attempting good manners,” said Sara.

  “So you want one of these… these unproven whippersnappers to join and make the Last Hand five again?”

  “No,” said Sara, taking the wind out of Cook’s sails. “Not at all.”

  “Oh,” said Cook, relaxing. “That’s all right then.”

  “I want them both to join,” said Sara.

  Lucy and Charlie heard the raised voices upstairs for a long time, then the noise subsided into more normal conversation, and by the time the feet came down the stairs, there was even the odd short laugh. They were introduced to The Smith and Hodge and Cook, who all admitted to knowing and liking Charlie’s parents, and then Cook made a large supper while the proposal was put to them and things were explained.

  And then Lucy and Charlie were left alone to decide what they would do. They looked at each other.

  “I’ll do what you do,” said Charlie.

  Lucy shook her head.

  “You do what feels right for you. Don’t make it all my responsibility.”

  He nodded.

  “Fair enough. Didn’t mean it like that, but I see what you mean. What are you going to do?”

  She looked round the warm room.

  “I nearly went with that man just because he knew my name.”

  “They know that,” he said. “And you didn’t go. You fought him off.”

  “Thing is, I don’t know everything about my past. I know some things but they’re not connected. At least they are connected, but only by the fact that I know I’ve been alone and running from something for a long, long time.”

  She took a deep breath. This was harder than she had expected it to be.

  “So maybe if I stay in one place I’ll find out what that is. Maybe I’ll find out who I am.”

  Charlie grinned and stuck his hand over the tabletop.

  “So we’re both in, then.”

  The Smith appeared in the door and caught them shaking hands very seriously.

  “I hope that means what I think,” he said. They nodded. “Good. And I guarantee you one thing more, Lucy Harker. You won’t be alone any more.”

  Cook found Sara in the passage leading to the hidden cellar where the Murano Cabinet stood open, an ordinary candle in a pewter stick on the floor at its centre.

  Sara was standing in the doorway holding another candle in one hand, the other placed within the boundaries of the newest addition to the prints on the wall. JS was written below it.

  Sara was shaking, and Cook realised with a shock that she was glinting.

  She watched Sara’s face, the face she had watched grow from a baby through girlhood to the woman now in front of her, and she saw the tear streak out of the eye and splash to the flagstone below, and seeing it she wanted more than anything to take the woman in her arms and tell the child that she still saw within her that everything would be all right.

  But she loved Sara too much to lie to her.

  So she stepped back, and as she heard The Smith enter the passage behind her she motioned him to stop until whatever memory of himself that Mr Sharp had left as he stood with his hand where Sara’s now was had finished coursing through her.

  They watched her try and smile through the tears, and when the glinting stopped she jerked her hand free of the wall and turned her eyes to them. She looked dazzled with surprise and something close to wonder.

  “He sang,” said Sara. “Mr Sharp sang…”

  “He sang to you,” said Cook. “Only you could provoke that in him.”

  “He sang farewell,” Sara choked. “He sang ‘The Parting Glass’.”

  “Then he will have wished you joy at the end of the song,” said Cook, her voice thick. “And you must honour that wish.”

  Sara wiped her tears away and then turned away again, suddenly bent double. Cook hurried to her and put her hand on her back.

  “My dearest child—”

  Sara looked up, an agony of incomprehension in her eyes.

  “What is this?” she whispered. “What is this pain?”

  And still Cook could not lie.

&
nbsp; “It is your heart breaking,” she said. “It is the worst pain in the world.”

  “I cannot go on,” choked Sara.

  “You will,” said Cook. “And that is why it is the worst pain in the world, because it doesn’t kill you. And surviving it makes every day of the rest of your life feel like a betrayal of what you loved and lost. But it isn’t.”

  Sara pulled Cook closer and whispered raggedly in her ear. She sounded ashamed beyond despair.

  “I never told him that I loved him…”

  And then after a long deep breath she shook herself, stood up straight and walked into the cellar.

  There was a table on which were Mr Sharp’s honing stone, four knives of various lengths and two pistols. Sara slid three knives in her belt and one in her boot, and put the larger pistol into a holster looped under her arm and the other in some arrangement she had clearly previously strapped to her upper leg. Then she smoothed her dress and turned to face them all, Lucy and Charlie too.

  Jed led Hodge in and then trotted forward to lick her hand. The Raven sat on Hodge’s shoulder and clacked its beak.

  “You look just like your mother,” said Hodge, his face smiling beneath the bandage blindfolding him.

  “You can’t see,” said Sara.

  “Raven and I been sharing eyes since I was a lad, and Jed since he was a pup,” he said. “No reason to stop now. You look the spit of her. She broke your heart to look at too.”

  “What are you doing, child?” said Cook.

  “You have The Smith. You have Hodge. You have Lucy Harker and Charlie Pyefinch: you still have a Last Hand,” said Sara.

  “They are unproven,” said Cook, eyes flicking at them. “No offence.”

  Sara gripped Cook by the shoulders. The tears had been banished by an act of will. Her face was fierce again.

  “I was a child when my mother and father went into the mirrors with eighty-three of their friends,” she said, pointing through the door at the tell-tale handprints. “Our friends. Your friends. They all did it to save something they loved, something they believed in. And though they were wrong and misguided, I cannot fault them. The Disaster happened, and I had to make up numbers for the Last Hand. I did. I was younger than those two! You have five. You have a Hand! Keep Lore and Law until I return. I have kept myself safe hiding in this house for too long.”