The Pursuit of William Abbey

by Claire North

  “All this I knew, so she knew it too.

  “In the end, as the sun set, she held my hand, and we watched the crimson water.

  “‘Let it burn,’ she breathed. These were the first words she had spoken for days. Then a little louder: ‘Let it all burn.’

  “I left her the next morning, and either she never loved me, or she also ran. I want to believe that Doireann never caught her. I have always been a self-important man.

  “That was… many years ago.

  “I settled in Portugal. New name, new everything. Stayed away from revolution, said little, talked to no one about the past, and lived. A good life, in its way. The People’s Society burnt. All across the world, it was burnt to the ground, but you can’t stop the change. Everywhere, it’s coming, the guns, the revolution, the war to end all wars – you can feel it in the air. We were only ever a tiny part of this picture.

  “Then the great men started dying. And their wives. And their children. And it wasn’t just how they died – I knew them. I knew them. These names in the newspaper, how long had the Society talked about them? The enemies of freedom, the great oppressors, they started dying all across the world, not with a flash, but with a whimper. It was her. It couldn’t be her. It had to be her. I… I had to know. I packed what I had, sold everything else I’d worked to make, and followed the blood. I suppose you did the same thing. It couldn’t be her, it can’t be her, but the names of the dead – the Society’s enemies, there was a list of the most dangerous, the cruellest men, ‘the little black book’, Margot called it, God help us I had put names in it myself, she always said it was ridiculous, nonsense, but every death followed that list, I knew it, I knew it was her, can’t be her – then I came to Milan and there you were. William fucking Abbey. There you fucking were, and I knew. It’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s… I just knew. That is all. That’s the truth.”

  Chapter 71

  The guns are coming, Sister Ellis.

  Can you hear them?

  Great men have played their games. They meant it for the best. Their best was whatever was best for their big ideas. For nation. For honour. For glory. For profit. For God. For empire. These were the things that were for the best, and so they pursued them, and now the guns are coming. This war will tear the century to pieces, and in her way, Margot was right. She was right. Nothing changes, unless you make it change. Do I believe that? Langa comes and I believe it and I do not believe it and I know the truth and the truth is such a complicated, messy thing, he tries to make me speak all of it all at once to deny myself in a single breath, the guns are coming and so is he and…

  … and in that place in Milan I lied to Coman. Langa was far away then, so I could do it. I looked him in the eye and I said, “There’s a cure.”

  He tried to hide his hope, and couldn’t.

  “This list she’s following – this black book of the Society’s. Do you have a copy?” He didn’t answer, and though Langa was far, I knew what was in his heart, and what was in mine, so I pushed on. “There’s a cure. I can remove her shadow. I know how.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No. I learnt it from the widows in India. They took me to their secret caves; I can save Margot.”

  “If you could do this, you’d have done it to yourself already.”

  “No. I can only do it to another. But if I find Margot, I can teach her how to save me. We can end this. All of it. Doireann, Langa – all of it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I shrugged. “Then make that choice. We’ll keep looking for her, and more children will die. That man there,” a nod towards Ritte, “is a spy for the Austrians. I’m sure he’ll have no compulsion about putting you in a cage. However, if you would like to save Margot’s life, help me. I have a cure.”

  For a moment, Coman wishes he has a shadow.

  I watch it on his face. I’ve seen it on Ritte’s face too, on Albert’s and the colonel’s. They yearn to have a clean, simple answer, to be gods among men, knowing all.

  Without, he simply has to trust.

  “If you hurt her…”

  “I won’t.”

  “If your friends…”

  “They won’t. I met Ritte when the shadow was on me. He is racked with a sense of failure and despair. He wants to feel valuable again. He wants to be redeemed for despicable things.”

  “I despise you, Abbey.”

  “I know. It’s fair. Think about it.”

  I stood up, nodded to him once, drifted to the door. Ritte rose without a word, following. Madame Rossi stayed behind, unarmed, smiling patiently, watching Coman, who stared at the wall and barely blinked.

  He said yes, of course.

  I didn’t need Langa to know he would, and felt disgusted at myself. There was no reproach from Ritte for what I had done, nor did he say the obvious, waiting truths about the path we were on. Merely: “You did well.”

  Coman gave us the book. Decades of names compiled by the Society, for the day they finally tipped their hand into murder. It was neither little nor black; he had scratched the names together from memory and half-heard conversations, dawdled on hotel stationery. Dozens of the names were crossed through already, dead by gunman’s hand, or Margot’s.

  Margot, who had become a murderer.

  There was no denying the truth of it now.

  Ritte stared at the names, sent telegrams, conferred with Madame Rossi, drew lines and calculated times, and at last proclaimed our destination.

  Chapter 72

  Chasing Margot.

  Do you know we’re coming?

  Maybe Doireann does.

  Maybe, as we criss-cross Europe, Doireann and Langa will meet on an empty road, and their fingers will tangle as they pass each other by, and they will share an understanding, a truth, that only the dead can.

  Milan, Rome, Munich, Cologne, Brussels, Berlin, Langa is coming now, he’s coming, marching up through the mountains as we chase Margot and her names, gathering information, hunting, until at last –

  – at the end of the road –

  – we came to Paris.

  Paris in winter. Tight, treeless streets of too-tall houses with lights burning dim behind locked shutters; pools of ice by the sluggish Seine, the stain of the factory fires on the mid-afternoon sunset. The summer wine does not warm; the kitchens smell of duck fat and pork grease and the already fractious tempers of people, stuffed and hungry, begin to fray.

  Not so, perhaps, the inclination of Monsieur Guillot of the 2nd arrondissement. He was all mirth and merriment, and why would he not be? A respectable manufacturer of ether, he had grown as the chemical sciences had into a respectable importer of morphine, then heroin, the latest medicinal wonder-drug to cure all addictions. With a perfect conscience and the adulation of his business partners and the tax authorities, he plied his goods to the poorest corners of the city, offering heroin for babies, heroin for dentistry, heroin for an aching back, heroin for a bad day. He personally didn’t touch the stuff, for he had a suspicion that long term it might not do any good, but the gentler pleasures of a swig of ether served on a bed of absinthe with a fine cigar were an acceptable balm to a stressful day.

  The People’s Society had tried and failed to blackmail him before. “Do whatever the hell you want!” had been his cheery reply. “Everything I do is legal, fair and above board. You try and shame me and I’ll laugh you out of the papers!”

  In the winter of 1909, blackmail was the last thing on Margot’s mind.

  Guillot had two children.

  The elder, a boy of twelve, was destined for great things. His Latin, Greek, maths, philosophy, German and English tutors all said the same. He liked to leave caustic soda in his governess’s bed and nails in her shoes, and had once urinated in her bonnet. When she tried to discipline the boy, she was locked in the basement for an hour by Madame Guillot, who screamed that she was a moment away from calling the police. When she tried to leave her job, her father hit her and told her
the family couldn’t survive without it, and what was she doing, foolish, stupid girl?

  The younger child, a girl of eight, existed to be neither seen nor heard. She was, by all accounts, a very stupid, dim-witted creature, but at least she had good teeth and hair; she needed to be married off as soon as she reached a reasonable age. Her music teacher reported that the girl had a melancholy temperament; the governess suspected that beneath the sorrow was a highly sensitive, intelligent child – but no one listened to her.

  Even in winter, this child preferred hiding in the garden to her parents’ house. No one looked for her there, which must have made it quite a surprise when, sitting alone on the wooden bench beneath an awning of dark ivy, she heard a woman’s voice.

  “Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle?”

  Behind the iron gate, always bolted and locked, that guarded the back wall of this green place, a woman. Joy, when it becomes cruel, does something strange to a human face. The smile is bright, wide, filled with teeth, and entirely unnatural. The eyes do not move with the lips; the voice is a little too high, the spine is taut even as the fingers, open and beckoning, are loose and easy. Margot was once full of life, but in that winter in Paris, she was a crooked wax sculpture of herself, melted and crudely reset in fire.

  But perhaps to a child’s eyes, she was simply a woman, wrapped in fur, a heavy cylinder of a hat on her head, smiling. She approached.

  “Mademoiselle, can you help me? I am looking for Mademoiselle Guillot; are you her?”

  The child nods.

  Margot’s smile grows wider as she squats down to the girl’s height, only iron between them now. She reaches into a pocket, then extends one gloved hand through, a boiled sweet wrapped in sticky paper in her hand. “You are Mademoiselle Guillot? I hadn’t realised how pretty and clever you were. My name is Margot. I was sent by your aunt, Leonie, she said I should stop by this house and say hello to her beautiful niece.”

  “You know Aunt Leonie?”

  “Oh yes. We are very good friends. Has she never mentioned me? We travel together, I went with her this summer to Venice and Rome, she must have told you about that.”

  The child nods again; all this is true. This woman is a speaker of truth. She edges closer, reaching for the sweet in Margot’s hand. Takes it. Margot’s grip turns in an instant, catching her by the wrist, hard, the smile never faltering, and now perhaps the fear that the girl had, the sense of a thing uneasy, flares, because she flinches and tries to pull away.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see your face better. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Nothing at all.”

  Now, with her other hand, she draws a pocket knife from her voluminous coat, and the girl is too frightened to scream. “This isn’t to hurt you, child. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “Let go, please let go!”

  Margot does not let go, but unclipping the knife nudges her sleeve back from her wrist, to reveal dozens of simple, straight scars, the newest one still clotting, running up her skin like sleepers from the railway tracks. She finds a clear line of skin nestled between two old, ridged white scars, and cuts. The blood curls instantly round her arm, quick and red. The girl opens her mouth to scream, but Margot looks up and there is a thing in her eyes, a thing like the fire of the boab tree, that silences the girl.

  The words she begins to speak are not the words I know. Every place casts the curse in a different way. Margot called on different powers from the widows of India or the sangoma of the Cape. But their purpose was the same, as was the blood that fuelled the curse.

  “Margot!”

  For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t stop, so I shouted, louder, running down the street, pulling her back from the gate: “Margot!” Four days and nights of watching this place, of waiting, and here we were, about to fail in all things. “Let her go!”

  Her grip on the girl’s wrist broke, as did the thrall she held on the child, who now, at last, screamed.

  The blood dripping crimson from her sleeve onto thin snow, Margot blinked up at us for a moment, bewildered. Ritte, Coman, panting down the street behind me; she took in each, lingering for a moment more on Coman before returning her gaze to me. Then, without a flicker in her expression, she turned and ran.

  We had all grown old. The chase was not one of sprints and bounds. She hobbled a little while, one leg limping and stiff behind the other, and in a tumble of half-run, half-shuffle, we followed. Coman reached her first, barrelling past me, calling her name. She turned, saw him following, knew he would catch her up. With a scowl, she marched beneath a cross to which dried flowers had been tied with grubby string, into a church of low wooden pews and hot candlelight.

  Here, in this place of incense and a golden Jesus, of echoing feet on bare, cold stone and the muted light of day fading through narrow windows, she stood before the altar. Coman reached her in a moment, caught her by the sleeve, and she turned instantly, one hand on his shoulder, another at the back of his head, pulling his face close to hers, whispering, as if they were husband and wife still, young lovers, keepers of terrible secrets brought together after a long road apart. Slowing, leaning on the edge of a pew, I watched them, wished that Langa was near, thought I tasted something of Doireann on the wind, and saw a hint of her in the darting of Margot’s tongue as she swallowed back the truth that her shadow would speak. Ritte arrived last, pistol in hand, face framed in candlelight, snow melting on his boots, drawing in ragged, excited breath.

  For a moment, the four of us stood there, frozen in that hollow stone place, before at last Coman moved half a pace back, caught Margot by the hands and, shaking his head, breathed, “It wasn’t you.”

  Not quite begging. Not far from it either. He stared into Margot’s eyes, imploring, and I heard Ritte sigh behind me, and felt suddenly very old, and tired, and wondered if it would be inappropriate if I put my feet up for a moment.

  She met his gaze without fear, blinking and saying not a word. His hands tightened on hers. “Why did you do it? To the children? Why the children?” Her head turned a little to one side, and for a moment she smiled, old and sad, and half nodded, urging him to understand. He shook her now by the shoulders, nearly shouting. “Why the children?”

  “It was the only way,” she replied, a little surprised, hurt almost by his indignation. “I thought you understood. You did once. It was the only way. Everything, burning. All of it, burning down.”

  His hands fell away from her, and finally, he had the knowing of it too, and there were tears in his eyes. She smiled, nodded, squeezed his shoulder again, pressed her forehead against his. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was the only thing left. I had nothing else worth doing.”

  He shook his head, pushed her back a pace. She stumbled, nearly lost her balance, her bad leg twisting before she caught herself with a sharp in-breath on the altar. Ritte edged a step closer, waiting. Slowly, Margot straightened up, and now, looking past Coman, turned her attention to me.

  “Hello, William,” she said. “Thought you might be dead.”

  “Brain surgery,” I replied. “Evils of empire and all that.”

  A twitch of an eyebrow, turned to steel. Her head tilted towards Ritte. “And who is this? A failed Austrian spy, yes? A man so unsure of who he is that he needs a shadow to tell him. The truth is irrelevant to you, old man. You are still only capable of hearing the parts of it that please you. Why are you here? Ah – the spy is here to kill me.”

  A finger stabbed towards Ritte, but her eyes flickered to Coman, searching his face, looking for something beneath his confusion.

  “If I must,” Ritte replied. “To end these things.”

  “Revolution is coming,” she answered with an easy sweep of her hand. “Fire and war. You cannot stop either.”

  “We can stop one despicable thing, ma’am. Maybe not the rest.”

  “Margot…” Coman began, but she waved him into silence.

  “How far is Langa?” she dem
anded. “A little too far. Then you will be left to wonder, to ask yourself, why this?”

  “I don’t wonder,” I replied. “I don’t need a shadow to know. What is the use of you – of us – if the truth changes nothing? What is the point of truth when your daughter dies? Let it burn. Let all of it burn. The world did not weep for Vhairi, or Doireann. Let it weep.”

  “Margot…” Coman again, reaching for her, waved into silence again as she stared into the truth of my heart.

  “Oh William,” she tutted. “What lies have you told to bring him here?”

  A flicker across Coman’s face; a moment, perhaps, of understanding. “No,” he spluttered. “No: Abbey has a cure.”

  Her eyes danced to me as I eased myself a little more upright, breath slow, fingers gripping tight into wood. Coman didn’t flinch; didn’t look away from his study of her face, put one hand on hers, barely touching. Asked: “Did he lie? Is there no cure?”

  Her eyes locked in mine, and they were not the same eyes I had known before. “William,” she mused. “You have grown old, haven’t you?”

  “So have you.”

  “Do you think you can persuade me to stop? When Langa comes, you and I will sit in the truths of each other’s hearts, and when you know me as the truth-speaker must, then you can leave your daughters behind too, and you can be the one who kills them, and you can have nothing left but the road and blood. Will you join me then? Will you see? No. You are too much of a coward. You love, you do not love. You forgive, you do not understand, you hate, you pity, you forget, you remember – you are very ordinary in your confusions, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. As ordinary as everyone else.”

  Her head tipped a little on one side now, her eyebrows twitching down, and now she held out her bloody arm, the fresh knife cut seeping from cold flesh. “Are you still a doctor?”

  I shambled slowly towards her, tore a strip from the altar cloth, wrapped it tight around her limb, pressing it over the wound and knotting it firm as the crimson slowly conquered white.