by James McGee
Sawney groaned.
Hawkwood, ears ringing, looked down. Sawney was clutching his chest. The pistol ball had struck him an inch below the ribcage. The blood that was welling over his shirt and waistcoat looked black in the moonlight.
He stared up at Hawkwood. “Bastard,” he whispered hoarsely. “Knew we should have killed you.”
Hawkwood squatted down. “Where’s Hyde?”
“And Molly Finn,” Jago said.
“Sal?” Sawney tried moving his head to see.
“She’s dead,” Hawkwood said. “Same as you. You’ve been gut shot, Sawney. All the surgeons in the world can’t save you from dying. Not even Colonel Hyde. Where is he? And where’s Molly Finn?”
Sawney’s chest rose and fell. His brow puckered. “Molly Finn? The little cow Sal picked up? You came here lookin’ for her?” Sawney tried to laugh and then coughed suddenly. Blood bubbled from between his gritted teeth.
“Where is she?” Jago grated.
“That’s what’s funny. She was never here, you stupid sods. We delivered her to ’im.”
“Who?”
“Colonel bleedin’ Hyde. Who’d you think?”
“What?” Hawkwood said, not understanding.
“You deaf? He wanted a live one, so we gave her to ’im.” Sawney coughed again. Blood burst out of his mouth. His hands began to flutter across his chest, fingers tapping against his waistcoat. His eyes rolled in his head.
“Jesus!” Jago spat. He reached down and grabbed Sawney’s collar. “Where are they, you bastard?”
For a moment, Sawney seemed to recover from his convulsions. His eyes regained their focus and he frowned. “You Jago? Hanratty told me about you. Said you were king o’ the castle? That right? That’s bleedin’ funny. That’s a riot.” Another spasm took him and he coughed once more.
“Christ,” Jago said. “For once in your miserable life, do something right, you piece of shit!”
Sawney’s eyes widened. He stared at Jago and then at Hawkwood. He moved his hand across his belly. His fingers began to play with the pocket on his waistcoat. Then they lay still and his lips parted.
“Why the bleedin’ ’ell should I?” he hissed, and died.
“God Almighty!” Jago released his grip and stared down at the corpse in disbelief. “God All bloody Mighty!”
A shadow blocked the moonlight coming through the skylight above them; Lomax stood with his neck cloth, dark with blood, pressed against his right shoulder. “Is it over?”
“It is for that bastard,” Jago said. “God damn him to Hell!”
Lomax gazed down at Sal Bridger’s corpse. There was a hole in the middle of her forehead and blood on the front of her petticoat. “She’d have been a pretty little thing once,” he murmured to no one in particular.
Hawkwood wasn’t listening. He was still crouched over Sawney, wondering where they went from here. They were no nearer to finding Hyde or Molly Finn. The night’s enterprise had turned into a bloody mess. Literally.
His eyes travelled down from the lifeless eyes to the bloodstained clothing. He noted how Sawney’s left hand was clamped over the wound, while the right looked as if it was still reaching into the waistcoat pocket. In fact there was a slight bulge there, he saw. Half curious and yet not really knowing why, he moved Sawney’s hand and reached inside.
Hawkwood tugged the object free. It was a silver cross. A strange thing for Sawney to own, Hawkwood thought. As he eased it out, a piece of paper came with it; a folded page from a notebook. Hawkwood opened it out. There was writing, he saw, in a small but neat hand. It was almost too dark to read clearly, but a word caught his eye. Hawkwood held the page up to the moonlight.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
In the taproom, the women were still clustered together, while Micah and Hopkins stood guard over a glowering Hanratty and his son, who were seated back to back, hands on their heads, legs crossed, on the floor in front of the fire.
“You!” Hanratty said, as Hawkwood entered. His eyes opened wider when he saw Jago and Lomax follow behind. His attention settled on Jago. “I know your face, too, cully.”
Jago ignored him. “Micah?”
“We’re good,” Micah said.
“There’s a girl upstairs. The Raggs were usin’ her.” Jago turned to the women. “I don’t know her name.”
“Callie,” one of them said.
Jago nodded towards Hopkins. “Take the constable up to her and bring her down here. Go now.”
Hopkins looked to Hawkwood for guidance. Hawkwood nodded. “Take my pistols. Give me yours.”
The constable frowned.
“Yours is still loaded,” Hawkwood said.
They swapped firearms and Hopkins and the moll who had spoken left the room.
“A word, Major.”
Lomax walked over.
Hawkwood tucked the pistol into his belt. “Nathaniel and I are leaving. You’re in charge here. How’s the shoulder?”
“I’ll live.”
“When they bring the girl down, see she’s taken to a physician. Nathaniel tells me she’s been sorely treated. There’s another one, name of Sadie, hiding in the larder. Make sure she gets out as well. Get all the girls out. Hopkins can see to it.”
Lomax saw the darkness in Hawkwood’s eyes. “What about them?” he nodded towards the Hanrattys.
“Micah will take care of them.”
Hawkwood looked towards Jago, who was standing next to his lieutenant. Jago gave a small, unobtrusive nod.
“You have a problem with that, Major?” Hawkwood asked.
Lomax held Hawkwood’s gaze for maybe two or three seconds. “No,” he said. “What about this place?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can burn it.”
There was another pause.
“I might enjoy that,” Lomax said.
Hawkwood nodded. He turned to Jago. “Ready?”
“Waitin’ on you, Cap’n.”
“Bring a light,” Hawkwood said.
20
Jago looked up at the front of the house. “Why here?”
“The address was on that piece of paper I found in Sawney’s waistcoat: number 13 Castle Street. I think it’s the home of Hyde’s old mentor and hero: John Hunter. Apothecary Locke told me Hyde lived here when he was a student. Hunter used to give anatomy lectures here, so Hyde would have had everything he needed for his butchery. Sawney must have delivered Molly Finn here; that’s why he laughed when he called you king of the castle.”
“No lights,” Jago observed. His eyes took in the shuttered windows and the raised drawbridge. “What would he want with Molly Finn?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkwood said. “That’s what worries me.”
Jago took the lock picks from his pocket and gave Hawkwood a wry look. “Murder, arson and burglary. Anyone ever tell you, you’ve a strange way of upholding the law? Here, hold this.”
“Just open the bloody door,” Hawkwood said. He took the lantern from Jago and drew Hopkins’s pistol from his belt.
Molly Finn came awake slowly. Her eyelids felt heavy and unresponsive. She tried to raise her head. That proved almost as difficult and when she tried moving her arms and legs, it was as if a great weight was pressing down upon them. Every movement was a huge effort. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she could manage was a weak swallow, and there was a strange taste at the back of her throat that she could not identify.
The room was candlelit, she saw, but everything was blurred. It was like looking up at the stars through a black lace curtain. She had the feeling that the room was large and her first thought was that she must be in a church or a chapel. She tried to recall how she might have got there, but her mind became a jumble of vague, confusing thoughts. She tried to concentrate, but that only made things worse. The candle flames around her began to dance and shimmer. Suddenly the whole room was spinning. It was much better if she kept her eyes closed, she decided, but when she did that, she could feel herself slippi
ng away. The more she tried to fight the sensation, the more tired she became. In the end, it was easier just to succumb. And in truth, sleep, when it eventually came, was a relief.
* * *
“Looks like we got it wrong,” Jago said. There was anger in his voice as he stared around him. Samuel Ragg’s pistol was held loosely in his hand.
They had checked the two doors leading off the entrance hall. The rooms beyond were dark, cold, and empty. The tiny arrows of desultory moonlight slanting down through thin gaps and holes in the window shutters had revealed no signs of recent habitation. The air smelled of dry dust and abandonment.
Hawkwood said nothing. He had been so sure the answer would be here. Yet there was no sense that anyone was present, other than the two of them. He stood at the foot of the stairway and looked up towards the next landing. All he could see was a well of darkness. He held out his hand. “Give me the light.”
They were halfway up the stairs when Jago paused. “Smell that?”
Hawkwood had already noticed it. It was the same odour as had been leaking from the vats and the benches in the cellar of the Black Dog. He suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of dread. It was as though the house was starting to close in around them.
The first floor was also empty. Most of it was taken up by one large room containing rows of empty shelves. There was an ancient wooden packing chest resting against one wall; inside were some paper boxes and a collection of empty glass jars.
The smell grew stronger the higher they climbed. Jago was the first to use his neck cloth to cover his nose. By the time they arrived at the second floor it was reaching in to the back of their throats. They stopped outside a closed door. The smell coming from inside the room was intense.
Hawkwood turned the handle and pushed.
“God in Heaven,” Jago said.
When Molly opened her eyes for the second time, little appeared to have changed. She still felt as if she could fall asleep for a hundred years, and the odd taste at the back of her throat refused to go away.
The mattress was as hard as a board. She was cold, too. She could still make out the glow of candles, scores of them, arranged around the room. Her eyes tried to penetrate the darkness beyond. The walls, she noticed, had a curious, curved shape to them; so much so that they seemed to be spiralling away from her towards the ceiling. It was a most peculiar sensation.
She went to push the sheet away, only to find that she was still unable to move her arms and legs. Her first reaction was to call out, but all she could manage this time was a dry croak. She strained to raise herself up but the harder she tried, the more difficult it became. Her efforts grew progressively weaker. Finally, exhausted, feeling as helpless as a kitten, Molly sank back and closed her eyes.
There was a noise. Molly started. The candles were still burning. She could see them, flickering dimly, and she could smell the tallow. Had she been asleep? she wondered. Perhaps she’d fainted. If so, for how long? It was very cold now, and growing colder by the minute. She shivered and tried to raise her hands to lift the sheet higher, but the simple task eluded her. The walls were behaving very oddly, too, the way they were revolving around her, like a child’s top.
The noise came again, instantly familiar, even in her confused state: footsteps on a wooden floor. As she tried to locate the source of the sound, a dark shape detached itself from the edge of the shadows beyond the reach of the candle glow, and moved slowly towards her.
Hawkwood stared at the skull. It was some kind of monkey. The skull was in a jar on a shelf. The monkey’s eyes looked as if they were on the point of opening, giving the impression that the animal had been sleeping when its head had been removed. The face, although heavily wrinkled, looked strangely young. It was framed by an incongruous cap of wispy reddish hair.
The jar was one of several score that filled the shelves along the right-hand wall. They came in all shapes and sizes, each one labelled. Every single jar was full of cloudy liquid. Suspended in the liquid, like insects trapped in amber, Hawkwood saw a bewildering assortment of objects. There were lizards with two tails and baby crocodiles emerging from eggs. According to the labels, others held brains of deer, of goats and dogs, the eyes of a leopard, the testes of a ram, the foetus of a pig, kittens, mice, snakes, baby sharks, two-headed chickens … All manner of oddities and abnormalities were displayed.
But it wasn’t the freakish animal parts that drew Hawkwood’s eye. He was no anatomist, but during his time as a soldier he’d seen surgeons at work and had been both the victim and beneficiary of their administrations. Similarly, as a Runner he had paid court to coroner’s surgeons like McGregor and Quill and was thus familiar with some of the more gruesome aspects of their work. So he knew what he was looking at. They were human body parts.
Most of the specimens appeared to be internal organs, at least according to the labels: hearts, livers, lungs, bowels, kidneys … the list was extensive. Some of the contents were easily identifiable, like the coils of gut, which bore a strange similarity to empty sausage skins; others he could only guess at. The patina of dust on top of the jars and the faded ink on the labels indicated that they had been on the shelves for some time. The sealant on several of the jars had rotted away, allowing air to intrude and the liquid inside to evaporate. Whatever had been contained within them had long since disintegrated and so bore no resemblance to its original state. Beneath the shelves, a dozen or so jars lay broken, the contents having spilled out across the floor. It was hard to distinguish the remnants of their desiccated contents from the lumps of calcified rodent droppings that littered the floorboards.
“What the hell are these?” Jago whispered.
“Preparations,” Hawkwood said. His eyes moved around the room. In the darkness, he had not seen how large the room was. It occurred to him that an internal wall had probably been removed to create the space, as on the floor beneath. There were more shelves on the opposite wall. They supported another collection of jars. The middle of the room was occupied by an oblong table. He moved towards it. On top were what looked like a butcher’s cutting board and an assortment of basins, both deep and shallow. There were some familiar items lying on top of the butcher’s board. Hand tools. Not the butcher’s tools of the Dog’s cellar, however; these were much more refined. But he’d seen their like before, in the hands of Surgeon Quill. These were medical instruments.
His eyes moved across the tabletop. It took him a moment to notice the difference between the table and the specimen shelves behind him. There was no dust.
The touch on her arm came from nowhere. Molly flinched.
“It’s wearing off,” a voice said. “She’s waking up.”
When she heard the words and realized there were two people in the room with her, the memory of her ordeal at the hands of the Ragg brothers came flooding back. And with the memory came the panic. She saw again the Raggs’ leering faces, felt the wiry strength of them, smelled their rank unwashed bodies, as sour as vomit, as they took turns with her. She remembered, too, the shame she had felt in allowing herself to submit to the degradation in the vain hope that they would spare her further hurt, knowing all the while that these were men without pity, men who derived pleasure from the humiliation of others. Now, when she felt the hands upon her, Molly knew she was about to be subjected to more of the same.
But this time she was not going to give herself to them without a fight.
When she tried to lash out, though, her arms and legs refused to obey. It was as if they belonged to someone else. She felt the sheet being lifted from her body. She looked down and understood immediately why she felt so cold. She was naked.
That was the moment true fear took hold. She tried to cry out, but what emerged was still no more than a feeble croak. Strong hands gripped her shoulders, forcing her down.
“Hold her,” the voice said.
She felt her legs pinioned; then her arms. They were wrapping some kind of binding around her wrists and ankles. Her head snapped
to one side and she saw the thick leather straps – and they were being drawn tight.
Molly realized then it wasn’t a bed they were tying her to. It was a table. She continued to struggle, but the more she fought, the tighter the straps were pulled. Held fast, unable to move, she saw for the first time the rest of the room and realized with a jolt of terror that it was neither church nor chapel.
The true nature of her situation struck Molly like an arrow to the heart. She stared around her in horror. From what seemed like a thousand miles away, she heard a voice she recognized dimly as her own, whispering falteringly, “Am I going to die?”
The reply, when it came, was soft spoken and reassuringly calm, almost affectionate.
“No, my dear. You are going to live for ever.”
Molly Finn’s screams were already filling the room as Titus Hyde placed the point of the scalpel in the valley between her pale breasts and, using the minimum of pressure, drew the blade down the length of her sternum.
Hawkwood heard Jago mutter a curse under his breath. He turned and followed the upturned, awe-struck gaze.
Bones; too many to count, suspended from an array of ceiling hooks, like withered bats in a dark cave. Femurs, fibulas, ribs, pelvic bones, bones from the feet and bones from the forearm, many with hand, toe and finger bones still connected, all blackened with age and candle soot, hung alongside clavicles and spinal columns; many of them with remnants of muscle and what might have been ragged strips of long-dead flesh still attached.
Hawkwood dragged his gaze away. The second, closer collection of jars also looked to be free of dust. The liquid inside them was a lot cleaner than in the containers on the opposite side of the room. He remembered what McGrigor had told him, that the favoured preservative was spirit of wine. Hawkwood wasn’t about to take a sip to test it. The transparency of the liquid gave him a clear view of the contents. He tried to recall which items had been removed from the Bart’s cadavers and the corpse found suspended over the Fleet. From their colouring and the consistency of the solution, there was little doubt the organs contained within these jars were much more recent additions to the collection.