The Pierced Heart: A Novel

by Shepherd, Lynn

  I woke the next morning in my own bed, in the light from the sea, and it was some moments—some moments of blissful ignorance—before I remembered what had happened, and I felt the immensity of my grief engulf me. My father insisted that the doctor be called, and when I heard him say so my heart leapt for a shameful moment, thinking he would come, but it was only the portly town practitioner my father had in mind, who could prescribe me nothing more apposite than a tonic cordial and some days’ rest.

  To this I have submitted with a good grace. Until today, the day of her funeral. I begged my father, with tears in my eyes, to be permitted to attend her to her last resting-place—I would be careful, I said, he could accompany me, we would be there only a short time—but he was adamant, and this time he would not give way.

  I have remained here, thinking of her, and watching the sky through the muslin blinds. It has been such a beautiful day, the sun bright and the wind soft, and the white and silent gulls lifting like a benediction in the air. And when it was over, Emily came to me, and sat with me, and told me that they had laid her near that bench she had loved so much, looking out to sea, and how their father had obtained a special permission for little Jip to rest there with her, in a casket at his mistress’ feet. We both wept then, and truly I thought my heart would break.

  “And she has your gift with her, too,” said Emily at last, squeezing my hand. “She was all in white, apart from the black velvet band about her throat, and before they closed the coffin I pinned your little brooch there, as she so loved to wear it. My fingers trembled so I feared the pin had pricked her, but that was silly, was it not,” she said, smiling tremblingly through her tears, “for now she feels no pain. And never will, ever more.”

  And now I am awaiting him. He has not been here, not once, since I saw him that night with my darling Dora, but I received word today that he will come tonight, and though I am half-eaten-up with reproach and misgiving, still I have dressed myself in my best gown, and curled my hair, and placed the chairs carefully in readiness. And my hands tremble so, I can scarcely hold the pen.

  19 APRIL

  It was gone ten when at last he came. I had never seen him so distracted, so agitated. It was as if my own high-wrought state had communicated itself to him—as if we shared some connexion so profound that merely the sight of each other charges the air with silent speech.

  “I will not treat you tonight,” he said at once, seeing my preparations. “I have decided it is time to proceed to the next step.”

  He turned towards the window then, and spoke softly, as if for his hearing alone. “Such a night, such a prospect, may not come again.”

  “Of what does this next step consist?” asked my father, his hand on the back of the chair, and gripping it, I perceived, rather tighter than was necessary. I wondered then, as I have often done these last days, if he has come to regret his decision to summon this man, and it struck me how utterly our positions have exchanged.

  “I am ready, sir,” I said quickly. “Whatever this next step may be. If you think it will assist me, I am ready.”

  My father looked at me, and then at our visitor. No words passed between them but I knew the force of that gaze, and a moment later my father nodded, and made no demur when I was told to collect my warmest cloak, for I was going out.

  Out into the chill of evening and a full moon now risen dazzling into the sky. There was a little dog-cart waiting at the kerb, and he held out his hand to help me up. We sat so close behind the driver that I could not speak without him hearing every word, and in some small part of my mind I wondered if the conveyance had been chosen precisely to prevent all conversation, so that I could not ask about Dora, or raise questions my companion had no wish to address.

  We headed at once out of the town, towards the high lane that leads up towards the abbey precincts, where we came to a halt, and the driver being instructed to wait, we set off towards the ruins. The moon was directly above us, casting shadows sharp as noon, and printing the pale grass black with every curve and arch and line. And yet the abbey was not our destination, and my steps faltered when I realised where, in truth, he was taking me. He turned then, seeing my hesitation, and came so close that I could smell him—smell him as I did in my dreams, when that dry and metallic scent so lingers on my skin.

  “There is nothing to fear, Lucy,” he said, taking my chin in his hand and looking into my eyes. “I thought you would wish to bid your friend farewell?”

  But not like this, I thought. Not like this. But how could I say so without giving offence, or receiving rebuke. And so I nodded, and he led me the last yards to the gate, and held it open, gesturing me to go before. I looked at him then in misgiving, wondering why he had led the way thus far but now wished me to precede him, but he merely smiled and lifted his hand towards the bench, and the grave, and the sea.

  I thought at first that the fog must have rolled in from the shore. I had never yet seen a true sea fog, but the townsfolk have talked of them, and I knew the sailors’ fear of ghost ships glimpsed amid the mist, and the muffled voices of the dead luring them to their wreck. But no; tonight the air was clear, and the wide bay glittered silently below us, and I knew that what I saw before me was neither the weather of the world nor the conjuration of man. Where they had laid her, where the earth was still dark with turning, and no stone yet stood, a pale glow rose in feathers of white flame, faint at first but gathering in strength, coiling and recoiling, mingling and separating until it seemed brightness welled from every inch of the grave, now like rain seen from afar, now like God in a pillar of cloud, and now like those eerie lights I saw once as a child, streaming green and white and purple across a frozen northern sky.

  I moved slowly forwards, hardly knowing what I did, drawn as to a lodestone, until I could reach my hands into the waterfalling light and watch it run through my fingers, and dip and waver in my breath, and when I lifted my face into the icy flames I felt an energy I had no name for flood my being, as if all my veins ran cold with quicksilver.

  I cannot tell how long it lasted, how long it was before I fell backwards, swooning, into his arms and he carried me like a lover to the bench and laid me down, bending over me as he had bent over Dora, his hands at my breast, loosening my clothes. “What did you see?” he said urgently, his face close to mine. “What did you see?”

  I tried to explain as I struggled for my breath, that it was what I had seen before, in Vienna. The same, and yet not the same. That this was a light to pierce the heart with beauty and delight, but when I had touched the Influencing Machine it was pain, and the taste of metal in my mouth, and a rush which was not exhilaration but dread. I feared my answer might vex him, but he merely nodded as if my words were merely a confirmation of something he had already surmised long before, and I knew, afterwards, that I had pleased him.

  “There is blood on your lip,” I said at last.

  He stood then and walked away, and I saw him take his handkerchief from his coat.

  “You saw nothing, did you?” I whispered, as he stood there, wiping his mouth.

  “I have not your gift.”

  “So why did you bring me here—how did you know what I would see?”

  He withdrew a little then, and looked out to sea.

  “For centuries tales have been told of emanations of uncanny light at the site of new-dug graves. Some call them corpse candles, others will o’ the wisp. In Holland they are the dwaallicht, in Sweden lyktgubbe, in my own country irrwisch. The phenomenon has been attested in every society, and every age, and is attributed, even now, in our enlightened century, to the work of the devil or the presence of ghosts. Many have I examined who have witnessed it, but none has seen it as you can see it. It is a rare and precious gift that you possess, and yet there are some, perhaps even here, in this supposedly civilised little English town, who would condemn it as witchcraft, or shun it as the delirium of the insane.”

  I shivered, remembering what I heard that old woman say, in Vienna,
before we departed: “The devil does his work through the delusions of this lunatic.”

  “I would not blame them,” I said eventually. “I thought I was mad.”

  He smiled, and I saw his long thin teeth glint in the moonlight. “You are not mad, Lucy. But now it is late, and you are fatigued, and I must return you to your father. We will talk of this more tomorrow.”

  20 APRIL

  I woke this morning to a bright blue sky, and a mind clearer and more contented than I have known for many days. I am not mad, I told myself, as I stood at the window looking down at the little pearly waves nibbling at the sand. I am not mad. I went down the stairs singing, and out into the sunlit garden to find flowers for the breakfast table. My father had gone, once more, to the custom-house, and so it was that I was alone when the knock came to the door. And as soon as I saw his face I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  “What is it?” I implored, as I led him to the sitting-room, my arms full of daffodils. “What is it?”

  “Pack your things, Lucy,” he said, his voice rasping as if his throat were raw. “We are to leave within the hour.”

  “But what—” I began, stepping involuntarily towards him. But he made no movement to touch me, and turned away, his face to the window.

  “The next phase of your treatment must take place in London. I require the use of certain special apparatus that I cannot obtain in such a remote district as this. I have taken rooms in Piccadilly, and will have a housekeeper in residence, so you will have a chaperone.”

  “But why did you not mention this last night? And why should I need a chaperone, when Papa will be with me?”

  “Your father has given his permission for you to depart at once. He has business to conclude here, and will join us in due course. I saw him, not half an hour ago, at the custom-house, and it is all agreed. So please, do as I ask, and pack your things.”

  I had wanted nothing more, all these last days, than to have him to myself, but now the prospect was before me I was suddenly afraid.

  “I should prefer to wait for my father to return.”

  “That is not possible,” he answered, turning again to face me, his features blank of all emotion. “I have received a most urgent summons to London that cannot be delayed. I had thought you above such childish and irrational objections. I will await you outside.”

  And so I did what I was told. I gathered my clothes in my little travelling case and placed this journal within my cloak. And before the hour was out he had closed the carriage door behind me and climbed onto the box with the coachman, and the heavy black coach loaded with boxes and trunks was rumbling across the cobbles towards the road.

  The last thing I saw, as we passed, was Mr Holman, at the door of Bourne House, and with him the curate of the little church below the graveyard.

  I have never seen such terror in the faces of men.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LONDON

  IT TOOK CHARLES A long time to convince Sam that the girl found in the Shepherd’s Market alley-way could be the fourth victim of the same murderer. A murderer of the type Charles’s great-uncle once called a sequential killer, more than a hundred years before the coinage of a far better-known modern phrase. And Sam’s reasoning did hold, up to a point—the girl in the alley was intact, there was no eviscerated heart, not a single drop of blood. In fact, it was only when Charles grasped his friend’s arm and forced him to stand in front of the previous victim to show him almost identical wounds on her neck that Sam was reluctantly convinced. And it was only then, of course, that they understood the significance of what the old woman in the alley claimed to have seen, and they realised they might have had their first sighting of the man they had been seeking. But after spending the best part of the night interviewing his drunk and increasingly disorderly witness, Sam is in no very positive frame of mind when he knocks at the door of the Buckingham Street house at just after ten the following day. Though from what Abel Stornaway tells him, he’s not the only one in need of sleep, a hot bath, and a decent breakfast.

  “I dinnae think Mr Charles has been to bed at all. He’s been pacing up and down in the office mostae the night, I reckon.”

  Sam makes a face, half to himself. It’s a poser, this case, and no mistake, but he can’t see why his old colleague should be taking it so much to heart. It’s Sam’s job that’s on the line, after all. And a new job at that.

  “Can I go up?” he says.

  “Of course ye may. Will ’ee be wantin’ anythin’?”

  Sam shakes his head and starts up the stairs, and when he turns the bend on the first landing he finds little Betsy eyeing him shyly through the bannisters above, and the two of them play a boisterous game of peek-a-boo for a minute or two before Charles hears the commotion and the office door bangs open.

  “Nancy!” he shouts down over the landing, and the little girl gapes at him a moment with huge rounded eyes before racing back upstairs and out of sight.

  “Looks like you scared ’er,” offers Sam, following Charles into the office, but he gets no reply. Charles’s sleepless night has clearly done little for his mood.

  “What did the doctor at the morgue say?” asks Charles, levering himself back down into his chair.

  Sam shrugs. “Said she’d lost a lot ’a blood, but ’e couldn’t account for ’ow it might ’ave ’appened. Or what killed ’er. The word ’e used was ‘inconclusive.’ Which is fancy talk for ‘no bleedin’ idea’ if you ask me. ’E ain’t got no more idea ’ow she died than I ’ave.”

  “And the old woman—did she see anything? What the man looked like—what he was wearing?”

  Sam snorts and shakes his head. “She’s still soberin’ up, but I don’t reckon she’ll be much use even when she does. Claims she didn’t see ’is face, and can’t tell us ’ow long the girl’d been there. To be honest, I’m not sure she even knows what bloody day it is. Most of it were a load o’ nonsense—just the gin talkin’.”

  He’s fiddling with a button on his coat now, and Charles knows something tricky is coming.

  “Look, Chas,” he says eventually. “Are you sure about this? ’Cause apart from ’er lookin’ so white, I just can’t see the connexion wiv this latest one. Those marks you saw—it were just pin-pricks, weren’t it? Made by a necklace or such? And given the first two are already rottin’ in their graves we can’t even say for sure they ’ad the same. It just seems like a wild goose chase to me. An’ that ain’t like you.”

  You will have gathered by now that Charles has not told Sam what he was really looking for at the morgue, or shared the conversation he had with O’Riordan that led to it. Because at one level Sam is, of course, completely right. It is, indeed, very unlike Charles to behave in a way that defies logic, logic being one of the two principles Maddox taught him, and which he has always worked by. The very notion that there might be some supernatural force at work here is an utterly insane idea that would have Charles laughed out of any police-station in London if he even raised it as a possibility. But all the same, he cannot completely discount it. For the very simple reason that he has not—even after a sleepless night thinking about it—found another explanation for the marks on those girls’ necks. And that’s what he needs, because without it there’s no way he can close down O’Riordan—or open up to Sam.

  “I don’t think that’s the answer,” he says eventually. “There’s no necklace I’ve ever seen that could leave such a scar. Especially only on one side.”

  They sit in silence a moment, then Sam sighs. “Only time I’ve ever seen anyfing like that were on me ma’s arm after she ’ad our Tilly. After they blooded ’er.”

  Charles stares at him. “Say that again.”

  Sam flushes. “I know it ain’t the same, but when me ma had the fever after ’er confinement, the quack bled ’er. He ’ad some weird little instrument that left a hole a bit like those ones on the girls. But that were on ’er arm, not ’er neck, and it were only one mark not two, an’ much bigge
r.”

  Charles gets up and goes to the window. “But it might be the answer all the same, Sam. It would explain the state of the bodies—if the girls had been bled, and aggressively, just before they died then they might well have looked that pale.”

  “But why would ’e want to do that to ’em? And if these marks ain’t the same, ’ow does that ’elp us anyways?”

  Charles turns towards him. “But that’s just it, they might be. It’s a long time since I let blood, and in my opinion it usually does a lot more harm than good, but I know they’ve invented some new instruments in the last few years—instruments that might leave marks exactly like that.”

  “But how are you goin’ to find that out? Could take days—weeks even.”

  “No,” says Charles, “it won’t. Because I know exactly where to go.”

  Half an hour later he’s in a hansom cab heading along Pall Mall. A hansom cab because impatience has outrun prudence, and the crowds make the ’buses not just slow but sweltering. But even the cab makes heavy weather of such a short journey, and Charles stares out of the window in a simmering and impotent irritation as they travel scarcely faster than a foot’s pace up towards Hyde Park, and into the ramshackle village of makeshift booths and stalls that has sprung up about the Great Exhibition entrances. When he steps down from the carriage the air is salty with the smell of the fried fish and sausages which are the Victorian equivalent of fast food and a good deal less refined than the sandwiches and soda water offered by the Refreshment Courts inside. The Exhibition hall catches the full glare of the morning sun, glittering like some exotic Far Eastern pavilion, and although Charles has been rather patronising about this whole endeavour ever since he heard it was planned, even he cannot fail to be struck by the skill of its engineers, and when he reaches the head of the queue and is allowed inside even his breath catches a little at the sight of the vast ironwork nave that opens before him. And nave is the right word, for this is truly a cathedral to commerce. At the far end, a living tree stands beneath the arching apse-like glass, and galleries run like clerestories on either side, balconied with red and hung with long pennants of yellow and blue. And as for the exhibits—the sheer range and resplendence on show here staggers the mind. From where he is standing Charles can see a line of huge statues retreating into the distance, horsemen on rearing steeds, enormous bronze urns three men high, reproduction Greek goddesses, and plaster casts of celebrated samples of ecclesiastical architecture. The courts of the exhibiting nations open from the aisle like side-chapels, each bearing its flag like a saint’s insignia, and a gold name blazoned above. And everywhere, everywhere, there are people. Moving, milling, pointing, appraising. The noise booms against the glass like a revolution.