by KJ Charles
Iron and steel will bend and bow…
I tried to remember what came next. Build it up with silver and gold, I recalled, which would be duly stol’n away. The poor scansion of that stanza had always annoyed me.
That was not what the children sang. Instead, in the piping tones of childhood, came:
Build it up with blood and bone, blood and bone, blood and bone
Build it up with blood and bone, my fair lady.
They were playing intently, the two tallest girls joining their hands high, the rest snaking through and winding around in an endless loop. Their eyes reflected odd lights, the reds and greens and golds of the night, with a bright, animal sheen.
Blood and bone will keep the stone, keep the stone, keep the stone
Blood and bone will keep the stone, my fair lady.
We had never sung it like that at home. I wondered if children all over England had different versions of the tune, and if the city children’s versions were always such gory horrors. Probably: most traditional songs were, and this sounded deeply traditional. It reminded me of something, in fact, something… King Arthur? I had been reading a volume of Arthurian tales just last week, after my encounter with the legend of the butterfly bishop.
Build it up with stone so strong…
“Ah, Merlin,” I exclaimed aloud. That was what the song had brought to mind, of course: a Welsh tale. Merlin and King Vortigern and…the palace…
My breath stopped in my throat.
Stone will last for ages long, ages long, ages long
Stone will last for ages long, my fair lady.
I had to talk to Simon. I ducked off the step, into the teeming crowd, careless of who I shoved in my urgency to get to Fetter Lane. Please God he would be there. I did not want to seek him at Hartley House. I did not want to set foot in Hartley House ever again.
I had left the children behind me, playing a new game, but their song rang in my ear. Build it up with blood and bone… It could not be so, I told myself. But I knew, with an awful soul-deep certainty, that it was so, and I feared that knowledge.
The procession had come down Chancery Lane. I shoved my way back towards Fleet Street through the jostling crowd, cursing my modest stature. Simon could have shouldered through without effort. Crowds probably parted before him.
I wished he were here now. I wished for him as a child in the dark wishes for its nurse.
Fetter Lane ran north from here but I was on the wrong side of the street. I looked around, assessing how best to force a passage through the procession, and saw a man look back at me. I registered the bowler hat and moustache as familiar before I recognised him. The man who had asked what I had learned, who had not gone back to Hartley House with my message but was staring at me now.
His face was empty of feeling, betraying no human sentiment at all, but he began to shove through a group of masqueraders, coming towards me, and I turned and ran like a hare.
He stood between me and Fetter Lane, and I had no desire to play tag with him in a crowd. I fled instead into the dark alleys of the Inns of Court, that little maze of barristers’ chambers and legal buildings. It was scarcely lit, and the shadowy lanes appeared almost black after the torchlit Strand. The cries and cheers from the procession were still audible, as were my pounding footsteps in the quiet lane, and—oh God—the other footsteps following.
I dived through Pump Court. There was a small enclosed garden ahead to my left, through which I might reach Old Mitre Court and double back onto the Strand. Or such was my intention, until I realised that of course it had been locked and the high railings would take too long to climb.
I had not enough breath to curse, or time to do it. I ran on through the imposing buildings, damning the legal profession and its winding ways, and the footsteps behind me came closer.
I had to make it back to the Strand. It had been a foolish error to leave the highway, with lights and people about. He could cut my throat in the dark and silence of the Inns without a soul by to hear my last cry. And he would, because if he was protecting the truth I suspected, there could be no alternative.
I took a violent left onto Kings Bench Walk and pounded on, gasping in the icy air. From there a little alley that ran up to Old Mitre Court would lead me to the Strand, and the protection of the crowd.
I glanced behind. That was a mistake. My pursuer was close, not twenty feet behind, running with a ferocious, silent determination, and as I looked, he raised his head and met my eyes.
I tripped, stumbled, slid. Regained my footing and sprinted on, fuelled by desperation, because I had seen murder in that look. I did not turn again.
Old Mitre Court brought me onto Fleet Street just opposite Fetter Lane. I hurtled over the road, praying that I could just make it to Simon’s door, that he would be at home, and heard the cry behind: “Stop thief!”
The devil. Heads turned, hands grabbed—a running man is a guilty man. I slid out of their way, wrenched myself free of someone’s grasp, losing precious seconds, and fled with the last breath in my body up Fetter Lane.
Simon lived at number 166. I had only written to him, had no idea which end or side of the street that might be, and no time to look around with my pursuer close behind and catching up.
“Simon!” I called desperately. I could barely draw breath into my labouring lungs to shout. “Simon Feximal! Simon!”
A strong hand grasped my arm from behind, its impetus pushing me forward. My pursuer grappled me, shoving me down a side alley as I attempted to gather my wits. His shoulders were heaving too, but he was big, and powerful, and as he shoved me against a wet, cold brick wall, he brought up a knife and set the point to my throat.
“Tell me what you know,” he rasped. His face was patched red, and his eyes glittered with anger, as though I had inconvenienced him with my resistance to being murdered. His bowler hat had somehow stayed on his head throughout that mad chase. “What you know and who you told.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I gasped, and realised my mistake at once. If I had claimed Simon knew, or my editor, I could perhaps have used that to bargain for my life.
Or perhaps I could not, because the man in front of me did not look as though he bargained.
He increased the blade’s pressure on my neck. I tried not to breathe deeply in case I cut my own throat for him with the movement of my flesh, but my lungs were starved of air and shallow breaths felt like slow suffocation. I needed to gasp, but if I did the knife would dig deeper into my throat. The panic must have been writ clear on my face, for I saw satisfaction bloom on his.
“What does Feximal know?” he demanded, twisting the blade’s point against my skin.
I could not meet his eyes. I stared past him, over his shoulder. “Stop,” I gasped. “Please. I’ll tell you anything. Just let me breathe.”
“You’ll tell me everything,” the man insisted, giving me an extra little prick with the knife point.
“Yes, yes. Please, I beg you,” I wheezed, with shameless servility.
The man gave a grimace of satisfaction at my collapse, and moved the knife an inch or so. That allowed me to gasp for air. It also allowed Simon, standing behind him like a masculine image of Nemesis, to take a grip on his collar and pull.
The man went spinning away from me, stumbling several paces. He recovered his footing fast, but not fast enough because Simon was on him.
I have often had occasion in my published stories to remark that Simon has the physique of a heavyweight boxer. That is because he is a heavyweight boxer. I did not know then that he spent an hour a day in the gymnasium and had won a number of amateur contests, but I could have made an informed guess from the coldly scientific manner in which he eliminated my assailant, while I sagged against the wall, trying not to fall over. It took him, I think, four punches in not many more seconds, and the man in the bowler hat was still holding the knife when the last blow landed on the point of his chin and snapped his head back. He went down into the mire of the all
ey. Simon stooped to pluck the knife from his hand and came over to me.
“Robert.” He put a careful finger to my throat. Even in the dim light, I could see the dark stain when he took it away. “Good God.”
“I need to tell you,” I croaked. My knees, to my shame, were shaking. “I know about the children.”
166 Fetter Lane was just around the corner from Crane Court, the noxious alley where I had nearly been killed, and where Simon had left the unconscious man after going through his pockets. I huddled on a worn leather settee in the cluttered drawing-room, gripping a mug of sweet tea with both hands, with Simon sitting by me and Miss Kay in a chair by the fire. I had not asked how Miss Kay came to be there.
“Well?” she demanded of me.
It was difficult to know where to begin. I turned to Simon. “Did you get my messages today?”
“I had one. About Glasport, the architect.”
“I sent two. The second may have been intercepted.”
Miss Kay’s brows shot up. Simon frowned and motioned me to continue.
“I wrote the first time to advise you about the architect. Glasport applied the mortar to the foundation stone of Hartley House, then went home and died with a noose around his neck. I wrote again to let you know that I intended to print a story on the haunting, appealing for information. My attacker came to the Chronicle, posing as a messenger, before my second message could have reached Hartley House. I thought that he came from his grace of Sarum and I hoped to persuade him that we were close to an answer, to buy time to stop Dr. Berry.”
A look flashed between Simon and Miss Kay at that, but neither spoke.
“So I told him that the solution was in the message I had sent you, and that I had already written the story. I was referring to my second message. I believe he thought I meant my first. He tried to kill me because he thought I had found out about the architect’s death, and written a story accordingly.”
Miss Kay frowned. “Why would he try to kill you because you knew about the architect’s suicide? Is that not a matter of record?”
“I know why he had to die,” I said. “That is the story someone does not want written.”
“And that is…?”
I steeled myself, afraid it might sound absurd, though there was no doubt in my mind. “Do you know the tale of King Vortigern and the boy Merlin?”
The marvellous thing about scholars of the arcane is that they very rarely ask tiresome questions such as, “What has that to do with anything?” Miss Kay did not even blink. “Of course. King Vortigern’s new palace was built every day, and every night it fell down. His wizards told him that it could only be built by—”
She did not breathe for a second. When she began again, she spoke slowly. “By sacrificing a child and mixing its blood into the mortar. That would ensure the palace stood forever, protected by its victim.”
“Build it up with blood and bone,” I said.
“Blood and bone will keep the stone,” Simon answered, as if by rote. “Dear God, Robert. Are you sure?”
“I have no evidence.”
“You have awareness.” I did not know what he meant, but he spoke with such certainty that I did not think to question. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am quite sure.”
We were all silent for a moment. Miss Kay spoke first. “Who else knows?”
“Nobody,” I said. “I realised when I was going home, less than half an hour ago. But that man… I suppose he followed me, but I stopped to eat and to watch the procession. Perhaps he has already communicated with his masters. Perhaps he is doing that now.”
“Who are his masters?” Simon and Miss Kay spoke together, and exchanged brief, familiar smiles. Despite the tension in the room, it was perhaps the most relaxed expression I had ever seen Simon wear, and in truth, I resented that it was not for me.
“I don’t know who they are,” I said.
“Not Sarum,” Miss Kay mused. “If he had known, the origin of the haunting would have been obvious to him. No, Sarum summoned us, and someone pricked up his ears. Kept an eye on us, and you, Mr. Caldwell. And, as soon as they feared you were coming close to the truth, made a determined effort to silence you.”
“Robert is not easily silenced,” Simon said.
“You could not find out the truth because the chosen victims were too young to speak,” Miss Kay went on. “I could not because the protection was interwoven with the crime. The crime was committed to protect the house; discovery of the crime endangers the house. Hmm.” She shook out her left hand, a little flick of the fingers, and I saw then that every nail on her left hand was the same: disturbingly long, black, polished to an oily sheen. “Allow me to think.” She sat back, examining her crooked fingers.
Simon rose and pulled the bell. “You are exhausted, Robert. I will have a room made up for tonight. It is not safe for you to go home now. Tomorrow we will go to Hartley House.”
A knock at the door, some time later, indicated that the room was ready. I followed Simon up a flight of stairs and along a passageway, looking around me, feeling the pain in my toes from that frantic run. “Do you own the whole house?”
“It belongs to Theodosia. Here.” He opened a door. The room revealed was plain enough, with an iron-framed bed, a small fire just set and a ewer steaming with hot water, shelves piled with books, otherwise bare walls. It had the look of the rest of the house: a place that was inhabited but not lived in, a place used for food and work and sleep, desperately unlike a home.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You should try to sleep. You must be exhausted. Be assured, the house is safe.”
“Yes.” I wanted him to stay with me. Of course he could not, of course he could risk nothing in his own home—which was Miss Kay’s home. I could not consider that yet. But to have him so close, when I had been so frightened, and be unable to touch, even to ask for a comforting embrace…
I did not often repine about my situation under the law, but at that moment the injustice was thick in my throat. All I wanted was his warmth now, and I was afraid to ask for it.
I stared at him, silhouetted in the doorway, not coming in. He looked back at me, face unreadable in the dim light. Was he hesitating? Because he wanted to come in? Because he did not, and feared I might ask?
I had rendered myself feeble enough in his eyes and my own, crying out for help earlier. I did not think I could bear a rejection, and so I did not ask.
“Good night,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t…” He took a deep breath. “Good night, Robert.”
He shut the door. I slept in chilly sheets alone.
Simon, Miss Kay and I came to the front door of Hartley House together. The butler betrayed no sign of agitation in his majestic request that we should follow to the Small Drawing-Room, and yet I thought there was perturbation in the house.
As we paced silently down a corridor, Simon and Miss Kay both inhaled sharply. I had just time to wonder what they had seen when I felt it myself, the faintest sensation of cold, like the memory of a wet cloth drawn over skin, and the weeping began once more. I gritted my teeth against the noise. Simon muttered, “Good.”
“Why?”
“Berry hasn’t done his work.”
Miss Kay looked about to reply but at that moment a door ahead of us burst open and a woman rushed out. She was young, dressed in the most elegant manner possible for a lady whose shape still suggested recent motherhood, but her demeanour did not match the expense of her clothing. Her hands were clapped over her ears.
“Make it stop!” She shrieked the words into the room she had left. “I don’t care! Make it stop!”
A young man came out after her: his grace the duke of Sarum. He cried, “Claudia!” after his wife as the duchess fled down the corridor, made to pursue her, then stopped and turned to Simon instead. Around us, the child’s sobs rose higher.
“You must end this, Mr. Feximal. Today.” Sarum’s face was drawn
with sleeplessness. “I have heard your representations, but this is not to be borne. I have my wife and child to consider, and Dr. Berry—”
“We know what he says,” Miss Kay interrupted, with a bluntness that startled the young duke. He drew himself up, affronted, but she carried on, in much the same tone, “I imagine we are expected.”
Sarum made a gesture of invitation, and we walked into the drawing-room.
It was a pretty room, bright and modern with walls papered in a chinoiserie style and delicate tables that looked as though they could scarcely bear the weight of a teacup. It was not a room that should have housed Dr. Berry, standing with his fat fingers smothering a porcelain teacup. He sat by the side of a well-dressed, tow-haired man of some forty years.
“Ah. The occultists,” said this man, not rising from his seat or inviting us to sit. “Mr. Feximal, Miss Kay.” He turned a cold eye on me. “This gentleman is not a scholar, nor is he in the employ of his grace. He has nothing to do with this affair. I insist he leave at once.”
“Mr. Caldwell was brought in to this affair very comprehensively last night,” said Simon. “Those that should leave are Dr. Berry and his grace.”
“The devil I shall!” exclaimed that young man. “This is my house.”
“You are not in a position to dictate terms, Mr. Feximal,” said the seated man. “I am most unhappy with the conduct of this matter and the distress caused to their graces.”
“May I be introduced?” I asked.
The man gave me a chilly look. “My name is Parker. I am employed to assist with difficult and distressing matters that require tact.”
“Or silence?” I suggested, and Simon shot me a warning look.
“Or, as you say, silence.” The word was unquestionably a threat. “I have already spoken with your employers, Mr. Caldwell. I will not tolerate—”
Miss Kay began to whistle. The sound was shocking from a woman, doubly so in a ducal drawing-room. We all looked round at her as the notes she whistled resolved into a tune.
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…
She kept whistling, reached the end of the verse, began again. The duke shifted uncomfortably. Simon stood stock-still, looking at Mr. Parker, who watched Miss Kay without comment. Dr. Berry looked at me.