Hark! the Herald Angels Scream

by Hark! the Herald Angels Scream (retail) (epub)

  Pressed tight in the flue, he allowed himself a few moments’ tears as he trembled, his terror slowly easing. He wished he’d died with his mother, he wished Mr. Crockett had brought Harry here instead, and he wondered if perhaps the Tom-who-died was the luckiest of them all. He was free. He did not have to steal for his master or face ghosts or listen to terrible stories of a woman driven mad. He did not have to exist in a world which had not time or care for him. He was dust. He was nothing.

  Tom, however, as he dried his eyes and took a long, shaky painful breath, had learned in his short life that wishing for things did not make them happen. He was still here, and he still had to steal for the sweep. But he would do that one thing and then leave the rest of this dark madness until the morning. Crockett could beat him for not finishing the job, that he could take. It would be nowhere near the beating he would receive if he had no special item for his master when they left the house.

  He stared at the filthy blackness that had become his world and let it be a blanket around him as he made his decision. Miss Darkly’s room. He would go there, steal a comb, and then return to the drawing room until dawn. It was all the bravery he had left. His hands still trembled as he climbed through, and in his head his mother sang to him and he once again clung to her words.

  * * *

  —

  The air was biting cold and Beatrice Darkly’s thin figure was barely visible under the heap of blankets and linen on the somber four-poster bed. As Tom crept out of the fireplace, if it wasn’t for the sound of her breathing in the silence he would not have been sure there was another soul even in the room. On the side table, next to the unlit candle, he could see a cup and hoped it contained something from Mrs. Pike to calm her into a deep sleep.

  After the pitch black of the flues, Tom could see well enough in the gloom to make his way to the small dressing table near the windows. He felt sick with what he was about to do, and knew his mother would be so disappointed in him, but if he had to steal, he decided, then wasn’t it best to steal from a madwoman who had driven another to suicide? And maybe this would go some way to appease the Onryo? Perhaps it would leave him alone?

  A brush, a comb with pearls on it, and various other pins sat on the surface. He was about to take the smallest item when he noticed a small bowl filled with broaches and earrings, items perhaps from happier times but now covered in dust. The combs she would use. These were clearly forgotten. He picked up a silver broach with a red stone at its heart and slipped it into the hidden pocket of his trousers.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” The whisper, frantic, cut through the darkness, echoing his own regret for the crime he was being forced to commit. Startled, Tom turned to see Miss Darkly suddenly twisting and turning in her bed.

  “Better sister. Should have been a better sister.” The woman had pushed her covers away and her hands rose, as if pleading with someone in her sleep. “I didn’t…I don’t remember…I’m so sorry. No more. I can’t…no more.” The last came out in a wretched sob.

  Fearful of moving in case the woman awoke, Tom could do nothing but watch as she trembled in her sleep and tossed from side to side, obviously in some dreaming torment. It made him feel worse for what he had taken, and he wanted to get as far away from her as possible in the hope that he could forget.

  Something shuffled in the shadows beside the bed, and Tom froze as the figure came forward, emerging from the soot shadows of the night, movements sharp and unnatural, until her dress touched the side of the mattress. Yuki. The Onryo. Tom’s heart almost stopped in his chest as he watched her bend over the restless woman and start a strange almost rocking that brushed her jet-back hair against the sheets. Backward and forward she tilted, and slowly Miss Darkly quieted.

  The Onryo stepped back all angles in its movement, and then, suddenly, in one instant, she raised one grasping hand, flicked her tilted head sharply toward Tom and hissed. As her fingers flexed, the cup by Miss Darkly’s bed fell to the floor, and Tom, terrified, darted toward the door, ready to flee from both the insanity of the ghost and the living flesh of the madwoman who would surely now wake.

  The Onryo turned and her arm stretched toward Tom, and for a moment, as he glanced back, his terrified eyes met her dark glare, and he caught half a glimpse of the face beyond the hair.

  He stopped, assailed by a memory that until this moment, he had forgotten. His mouth dropped open. His mother. A memory of his mother. He was back in that alley in the city, unsure if he was dead or alive. Being swept up into the master sweep’s arms from his mother’s frozen ones. The rough feel of Crockett’s coat against his painfully cold skin. He was barely living but he saw her for the last time over the sweep’s shoulder. Her face. Not like her face at all. Distorted. Misshaped by death. Pale and yet blotched, her blood sunken after death. That monster was not his mother—lavender blue, dilly dilly—and he’d shut the awful image out from his mind.

  But she had been his mother, he thought as he stood between the fireplace and the door, watching as the Onryo stretched her arm out toward him. She had been his mother and he had loved her, and she had loved him. Yuki had loved the hangman. Yuki had not been a monster.

  He glanced at Miss Darkly, still restless but calmer than she had been, and still sleeping. He thought of the white hand pulling him free from the choking soot. He thought that if the Onryo had wanted him dead, he would be so by now. He looked at the cup on the floor and her outstretched hand. Was she trying to tell him something? To share something?

  He breathed crystals of icy breath and took a tiny step forward, sure that as he did so, the Onryo let out a sigh that sounded like the howl of a winter wind. He thought of her reaching for him. Always reaching. That’s what Miss Darkly had said too. That she was trying to touch her.

  She wants to be touched, he realized, as they stood there in the dead of the night, on the longest night of the year. She needs someone to take her hand. He saw her stance for what it was now—pleading.

  Without allowing himself time to change his mind, Tom took a deep breath and lifted his own arm, reaching out toward hers. He wrapped his warm small fingers around her icy pale ones.

  And then she showed him.

  They moved through the fireplaces to different places and times, a whirlwind of images that left Tom unsure if he was him or her, so immersed was he in the scenes that both held him for an eternity and threw him back into the darkness in an instant. He had no sense of what minutes were passing, and all he had to anchor him to the corporeal world was the cold grip of her hand in his. His spirit was somewhere other as she filled him with her story. Wood rocked beneath him as he sailed the oceans, heart full of happiness. The talismans she’d brought: wood wrapped in silk. Arriving in freezing England, another note waiting for her. Going to the inn dressed as an Englishwoman, fascinated by her own appearance. Waiting, waiting. Finally, in her own clothes and coming to Thornfields at night. The conversation. The fireside. The silk around her neck. The ending. And then, finally, the last image, a terrible thing that had not yet come to pass.

  It may have been hours, it may have been minutes, but Tom could not tell. When she was done, he was a husk that needed to be filled again, and the darkness blurred into nothing. But he understood. He knew.

  The hangman found him, as night was turning to dawn, sitting out on the wooden stump that was all there was to show of the tree where the man’s beloved had hung and where he had played so happily as a child. Tom, once again half-frozen to death, was barely aware of him as he rushed across the snow, and swept him up in a coat, holding him close. He didn’t hear him shout for blankets and a fire, and barely felt it when he stumbled in the snow. And yet he saw it all, as if from above. He was there and yet not there, once again, for a short while, hanging in the balance between life and death.

  “How long has he been out there?” Mrs. Pike fussing around him.

  “I do not know
. I saw him from my window. I was…” The hangman didn’t finish his sentence, but Tom knew. He’d been looking at the tree stump as if it could surrender answers to mend his heart.

  Tom tried to speak. His mouth moved but no words came out, although life began to tingle in his burning fingertips and toes. He had to survive. He had to tell Yuki’s story.

  “We need to get those clothes off him,” Mrs. Pike said, already tugging at his frozen rags. “Get a blanket around him.” She stopped suddenly as she tugged at his trousers. “Well, I never. Where did you get this, boy?” she asked, all care gone from her voice.

  “If it’s a bell”—the hangman threw more wood onto the fire—“I gave it to him.”

  “This is no bell.”

  Tom tried to sit up, his limbs screaming. The hangman turned as Mrs. Pike held up the broach fallen from the hidden pocket of his trousers.

  “My mother’s,” the hangman said, his eyes widening. “My father gave it to Beatrice.”

  “And this little bastard has stolen it. Look. Tucked into his trousers. It was there.”

  The hangman loomed over him. “Is this true, boy? Have you abused our kindness and hospitality?”

  Tom knew he should deny it, or at least try to explain, but his mouth was dry and there was only one thing he wanted to say. The hangman leaned forward and shook Tom roughly by the shoulders. “Is it true? Is this who you are? A common thief?”

  “He should go on the ships,” Mrs. Pike said. “To think I was soft on him. Looked fondly on him.”

  “I saw her.” Tom finally managed to spit the words out, heaving himself up onto his elbows. “Yuki. I saw her. I touched her. I know.”

  The hangman recoiled as if Tom were poison personified, his face full of disbelief and disgust. “I will hang you for that lie, boy, and I will make it a slow death. But first I shall make sure your master, who will no doubt be here soon, knows of your crime. Let him beat you for your wickedness!”

  Tom was barely listening. Although still dark outside, it was in fact the early hours of the morning. Once again the witching hour. The time that Yuki swung from the tree outside two midwinters ago, and the time that—

  “Miss Darkly!” Tom’s cry was hoarse as he pushed himself upright. “We must save Miss Darkly. Yuki showed me…she showed me…it’s happening now…” With a strength that perhaps was not his own at all, he wriggled past both Mrs. Pike and the hangman, and despite their curses and calls after him, he fled the bright warmth of the library and ran up the stairs on numb and frozen legs. They could not be too late. They could not. He could not.

  The hangman thundered up the stairs behind him at a surprising pace, with Mrs. Pike following behind loudly exclaiming she had no idea what on earth was going on as she breathlessly came after them.

  “Tom?” Another voice bellowed up from the bowels of the house. “Boy? What mischief are you making?” Arthur Crockett, the master sweep, had arrived, Elsie leading him up from the kitchen. His presence only made Tom run faster. In that moment he cared not what happened to him, whether he would be beaten or thrown into the ships or hanged by Godwin himself. He was driven by the visions that Yuki had shown him. The terrible injustice that had been done. He may now be a thief but he could still make his mother proud.

  He slid along the polished corridors and just as he felt the hangman’s grip on his bare arm, he pushed open Miss Darkly’s door.

  She was balanced on a chair, the cord tied round her neck and attached to the unlit chandelier above. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair hung loose around her thin shoulders, strands hanging over her face and down onto her white nightdress, all a pale echo of Yuki’s ghost. “I’m sorry, Theodore,” she whispered, as she saw them. “I’m so sorry.”

  She kicked the chair away.

  “Beatrice! No!” The hangman thrust Tom aside, sending him crashing hard into the wall where he hit it headfirst, and ran into the room, grabbing Miss Darkly’s legs and holding her up to stop her from choking.

  “Let me die, Theodore,” she said softly. “Please let me die.”

  Stars spun in Tom’s vision, as if the two once-lovers were being sprinkled in glittering snow, and then the stars and darkness overwhelmed him and he was once again lost to the world.

  * * *

  —

  When he came to, he was not in the warm comfort of the nursery bed but in the cold cellar, laid out on some old sacks, with one cast over him as if that could in any way keep the chill out. His head throbbed and in the candlelight he could see Crockett, top hat still on, sitting in the corner of the room, his wrinkled face full of venom.

  “You fool,” he said quietly. “Getting yourself caught like that. You think they were going to keep you, boy? In a nice house like this? You’re on your own, you know that?” He unfurled himself from the chair and leaned over Tom, his face close, hissing anger at him as he took one of the boy’s ears and twisted it hard. “I told you. I told you I would take no part in this. And don’t even think of telling them otherwise. I’ll strangle you myself if I hear so much as a whisper—”

  “Mr. Crockett.”

  The hangman stood in the doorway.

  “Mr. Godwin, sir,” Crockett took off his hat to reveal his thick greasy hair. “I was just—”

  “I can see what you were doing, Mr. Crockett. Mrs. Pike has prepared some food for you in the kitchen. Go and eat. I wish to talk to the boy.”

  “Do you think that’s wise, sir? A wicked boy like this deserves just punishment.”

  “Mrs. Pike is waiting, Mr. Crockett.” It was a voice that would brook no argument and despite his reluctance to leave the two alone, the sweep was wise enough to know he had no choice. With a final, withering glance backward, which left Tom in no uncertainty of his fate should he incriminate his master, Crockett left the room. The hangman closed the door. He took the empty chair and stared at the boy huddled on the sacks.

  “Is Miss Darkly…?” Tom was afraid to finish the question. Dead? Alive? Hurt?

  “She’s resting. She’s emotionally exhausted but otherwise unharmed.” A moment’s silence passed before the hangman spoke again. “That was my mother’s broach,” he said. “A ruby broach.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir. I truly am. My mother would be ashamed of me.” Suddenly Tom felt the urge to talk, to share a personal truth before trying to explain things he could not possibly know to this man who held his fate in his hands. “My name is William, Mr. Godwin, sir. Not Tom. He called me Tom after a boy who died in a chimney. I didn’t want to share my name with him. I liked the sound of my mother calling my name. I didn’t want him using it.”

  “I found the bell. You left it behind in my maps room. Were you looking for something to steal there?”

  Tom nodded slowly. “It was all so beautiful. But it was too beautiful. I needed to take something small. Something that wouldn’t be noticed.”

  The hangman stared at him for a long while, thoughtful. Troubled. “How did you know?” he said eventually, as if the theft were inconsequential. “What Beatrice was doing? You could not have seen her, for you were half-frozen outside. That broach was stolen hours ago, it was like a block of ice itself.”

  “She showed me that it would happen.” The boy looked up and hoped the hangman could at least see the sincerity in what he said. “Yuki. She showed me everything. It’s what she’s been trying to do with Miss Darkly. She wanted to show her.”

  “Show her what?” he growled.

  “That it wasn’t her fault. That they are sisters. They both love you. That Miss Darkly had no part in Yuki’s death.”

  “I think the others are right,” the hangman said. “I believe you must be an evil boy to talk such wickedness of ghosts and stories and blame.” He got to his feet, kicking the chair away, the boy’s talk of his love tearing the scars open again. “You are a thief and a liar.”


  “I am a thief, although I never wished to be, sir. But I am not a liar!” Tom, for we shall continue to call him that for the sake of clarity, young Alexander, said. “She brought two wooden charms with her. Small and wrapped in tiny silk purses. I think one was for you and one for her.”

  The hangman turned back, his eyes narrowing. “Omamori,” he said quietly.

  “If that is what they are called. She wore them around her neck to keep them safe. Near her heart.” He swallowed hard, for now he had to risk more anger with the truth he’d learned. “They are around Mrs. Pike’s neck now.”

  “What devilment is this? What accusations do you throw? Mrs. Pike raised me after my mother died. She raised us both, Beatrice and I. She loves us. Perhaps more even than my own father.”

  It was Mr. Pike’s words that found their way out of Tom’s young mouth as explanation to the angry man. “People will do terrible things for love.”

  Without a further word, the hangman seized Tom’s shoulder and dragged him out of the room and into the heat of the kitchen. Arthur Crockett sat at the table, shoveling hot stew into his mouth and his eyes widened, but it was not he the hangman glared at but his housekeeper. Mrs. Pike was by the fire checking the boots that Elsie was polishing.

  “Whatever is it now, Mr. Godwin, sir?” she asked. “What has the boy done this time?”

  “Do you wear any jewelry about your neck, Mrs. Pike?” he growled, thrusting Tom down on a stool and filling the doorway with his own broad frame, casting a long shadow on the flagstones.