Finding none, I sighed in relief.
Looking up, I noted that Night Horse had vanished.
“Follow me.” As always with the Hammer, his invitation was more a command. He took Night Horse’s place as my protector and propeller, his arm around my shoulders, bearing the weight my knees refused to support. He provided a taller, leaner, more well-dressed escort than his exotic cohort, and I certainly felt less conspicuous in his company.
Around the corner, we found a passably quiet reprieve from the bedlam, a cul-de-sac of shops hunkered in an alley crowded with colorful signs and shingles. They hung at jaunty angles from beams between buildings preserved from the days of the Tudor dynasty. The façades had once been white, but the pall of time had painted them many colors of faded, exposing some of the brick through cracks.
There was a certain charm to the place. The cobblestones boasted memories of the treads of men and women I’d read about in history books.
“We can take our respite here until the streets are quieter.” The Hammer swept his hand toward a small café door halfway down the alley, above which hung a black shingle, concealing more than it advertised.
“The Morning Star?” I read aloud. “Isn’t that a reference to the devil?”
The Hammer replied with a cheeky wink. “Not to us.”
Us?
As we ducked inside—well, the Hammer ducked, I fit through the door just fine—I observed the almost exclusively masculine crowd. They dressed in dark, somber colors; most grew heavy, impressive beards; and some were adorned with the unmistakable ringlets by their ears.
Oh, us. The Hammer’s people. The chosen ones. The Jews.
Without my spectacles, their faces were mostly indistinguishable, but wariness and displeasure were more often sensed than displayed.
I was not welcome here.
“Let us drink and wait for the crowds and police to disperse, shall we?” He nudged me forward, toward the back wall.
“I-I don’t really drink.” I offered a mild protest around a voice still infuriatingly unsteady.
“An Irish woman who doesn't drink? Have you ever heard of such a thing?” When I didn’t respond to his ribald teasing, he sobered. “Come now, Fiona, just something to calm your nerves.”
My nerves. I didn’t think they’d ever be calm again. Perhaps it was best I searched for courage of the liquid variety. “Very well, just the one.”
I’d never felt so conspicuous as when he directed me through the candle-lit restaurant and coffeehouse. I’d have thought such a dim, windowless place would be gloomy. But I found the contrast of white walls and dark wood painted with candlelight downright cozy. In all, The Morning Star was a great deal less rowdy than the cafes in which you’d find the students, artists, and young philosophers locked in sprightly discussion in Chelsea or along the Strand.
Men here spoke in sonorous tones. Respectful, even when impassioned. Their conversations most often carried on in a guttural but lyrical language I understood to be Hebrew. I could not imagine anything so different from my own native Gaelic. Nor so similar-sounding in the back of the throat.
Men eyed me with rank speculation as we passed. I could tell some of them liked the Hammer, and some of them were disgusted by him, but they all cast their eyes down and issued respectful nods as he passed.
A few greeted, “Shalom Aleichem.”
He always answered back, “Aleichem shalom.”
His were not a people, I gathered, where a blanket greeting to a room would do. I couldn’t imagine a regular tipping into the place with a rote, “Oi, mates!” and receiving anything back but censorious glances.
The Morning Star was larger than I’d guessed, and partitioned by a few railings, screens, and decorative columns to attempt to give every table the illusion of privacy. We claimed a spot in a rear nook of the café away from the only windows by the door. The Hammer positioned himself with his back to the wall.
I sat across from him but could not be still. Little tremors and twitches erupted in strange parts of me. My upper thigh. My eyebrow. My shoulder. My muscles zinged and twinged with the last vestiges of primitive instinct and mortal fear.
I wondered if I’d ever relax again.
Squinting, I traced a lovely tapestry woven with a symbol I’d never seen before, hanging behind the Hammer’s head. I longed for the extra pair of spectacles I kept back at home.
The Hammer ordered in Hebrew from a hovering, anxious waiter, who served us generous glasses of garnet-hued wine and dark, salted bread accompanied by a dish of thick liquid as smooth and gold as honey.
“We prefer olive oil to butter,” the Hammer explained.
“You’ve never had Irish butter, then.” I eyed the dish with more than a little incredulity, not believing him for a minute. How could anyone prefer anything to butter?
“Have you ever tasted olive oil?”
“No,” I conceded.
An ewer and bowl were brought to our table, and we each washed our hands. I wasn’t sure about the Hammer, but I was unspeakably grateful for the low light in the café. Perhaps the waiter wouldn’t notice the traces of blood.
If he did, he gave no indication.
Once we were alone again, the Hammer broke the bread, dipped a small piece into the olive oil, and passed it to me.
The last thing I felt like doing was eating, but I took it, remembering my manners.
“Everything tastes better to someone who just escaped the clutches of death, or someone who is about to surrender to it.” This was the Hammer’s idea of frivolous conversation? He observed me candidly as I popped the warm morsel into my mouth, and whatever expression I made pleased him enough to warrant a smile.
He wasn’t wrong. I’d rarely tasted better in my life. I should note here that I wasn’t about to give up my position on the superiority of Irish butter. Still, a good olive oil was now a welcome addition to my palate.
Awareness returned to me in warm, sluggish increments. A melancholy tune filtered from around a wall in a dark corner I could not see.
Now that we’d settled in, conversation resumed throughout the café with a muted, almost reverent hum. Strong coffee scented the air, but we were offered none.
The Hammer rested his fingers around his glass and lifted it toward me. “L'chaim. To life.”
I touched my rim to his, trying—and failing—to hide my trembling. “Sláinte. To health.”
I was not a great appreciator of wine, but what I held was unlike any vintage I’d ever tasted. Both dry and sweet. Earthy and velvety. It left syrupy rivers clinging to the edges of my glass as well as on my tongue.
An appreciative breath slid over the temperate warmth of the alcohol in my throat as some of the ache in my stomach relented. I sipped at first, but before I realized what I’d done, my glass was empty, and the Hammer signaled for more.
He regarded me with a tender sort of delight as he swirled the liquid in his glass close to the lone tealight on the table, waiting patiently for my second pour. “This wine is of vines older than the whole of the British empire. Or that of France, Italy, or Spain. Older than your churches. Than your Gods. From the times of the Romans and the Israelites.”
I nodded my fascination around another gulp, doing my best not to correct him. According to we Irish, no gods on Earth were as old and abiding as ours. We clung to them with such tenacity, the Holy Roman Church had to canonize a few of them before we relented to the invading Christian faith.
“The best wines are not from the west, as you Europeans like to claim,” he continued, unaware of my unspoken argument.
He waited for me to engage with him, and so I did. “Wine is a different warmth than whisky, I’ll give you that.”
His short breath threatened to become a laugh before he sobered, regarding me over the rim of his glass. “What were you doing in town today, Fiona?”
I attempted my next swallow twice before I finally succeeded. I had no wits left in me for lies, and so I gave him the truth.
“I was on my way to Scotland Yard.”
“To give them the turquoise beads?” He took a sip, hiding his reaction.
I kept the beads in a jewelry box at home. I stared at them all the time, making decisions then unmaking them. “To consult on a different murder, entirely. You remember I work for Scotland Yard as well as you? That connection has benefited us both.”
“Yes, I am aware.” After a wry, dismissive gesture, he reached for more bread, tearing it and dipping it into the dish of oil. “Is this a Ripper matter? Or does it have something to do with the latest murder in Whitechapel?”
He ate like he spoke, like he walked, like he gestured. Both decisively and gracefully, with lithe, exotic mannerisms. It transfixed me for a speechless moment before I remembered his queries demanded prompt answers. “Both, I think.”
I had the distinct notion that he was more than mildly curious but didn’t want to appear so. “They are connected, then?”
“That is yet to be determined. Did you know the woman who was killed in Whitechapel yesterday, Katherine Riley?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never met the woman.”
“Like you’d never met Frank Sawyer?”
Abruptly, he thrust the breadbasket toward me, and I was ashamed to admit, I flinched.
“I insist you eat more.” He annunciated every word with lethal precision. “The wine is stronger than you realize.”
I obeyed, telling myself it was because I wanted to and not because I was afraid. The bread and oil were quite, quite good. However, I did feel a change of subject was in order.
“Do you know what all that hullabaloo was about in front of parliament? It seemed every organization in the empire turned out, ready to go to battle. I don’t remember reading in the papers about a vote on anything particularly inflammatory today.”
“That hullaballoo, as you call it, was about me.”
I gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.”
A few muscles in his face twitched. “Several of the prominent gangs feel as though I require too much regulation and have acquired too much power. They decided to stage a unified uprising against me by hiding behind the colors and causes of organizations better than themselves.”
“What do you mean?” Rapt, I lifted my glass to aid the waiter when he materialized to pour me more wine.
“Do you realize, Fiona, that over the last five years—with the extreme exception of the Ripper—there have been less violent murders of women and children in London than in a century?”
I had not realized that. I’d been so focused on Jack that such statistics evaded my notice. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“There has always been a king of the London Underworld, and I am the best this city has seen in decades.” His hazel eyes glowed with a copper light, like two ingots heated in some inner forge. “I support the unions, who would keep children from factories. Who force industries to maintain a safe working environment for those in their employ. I retain more prostitutes than the East End Butchers, the High Rip Gang, the Red Blighters, and all the puny mobs of angry, unemployed youths who are a cancer on this city. Combined. Women line up to work for me because they are protected by my men, not used by them. In my brothels, they are not beaten, they are not starving, they do not die in the streets. I invest in many successful endeavors and charge less interest to enterprising entrepreneurs than the banks. Yes, I break the law, but I do so with a clean conscience.”
That gave me more to think about than I was capable of processing at the moment. “What about…what about the bodies you give me?”
He shrugged a shoulder with very Gallic indifference. “Men. Only men.”
“Yes. But dead men, all the same.”
He leaned forward, capturing my gaze like a cobra. “Every single man deserved the execution I dealt them, Fiona. If you knew their crimes, you’d have wielded the knife, yourself. Believe that.” He sat back, releasing my mesmerism, and drank deeply.
I never knew what to believe when it came to the Hammer, but I nodded all the same. “What do they have against you, these other gangs? Why don’t they want you in charge?”
“Many do, and those men are currently squelching the rebellion as we speak.”
“And those who don’t?”
“People in this world hate anyone who is not familiar. Who is not them. Men are forever at war with their counterparts. The rich and the poor. The dark-skinned and the light. The law and the anarchist. The conqueror and the conquered.” He made a flamboyant gesture around the café. “The gentile and the Jew. It is human to fear what you don’t know. To hate what makes you feel afraid. To declare war against one who would bring peace. Because, in times of peace, a warlike man can too often only hate and destroy himself.”
“You would bring peace?” I ventured.
“I would bring order. I am not like the government. Despite my reputation, I do not make money by killing innocent people and starting needless wars. To men like me, peace means profit.”
“Are you not a warlike man? Do you…harbor such feelings about yourself?”
He tilted his glass at me. “I like you because you dare ask me such complicated questions.”
I’d another one to ask. “If you are such a man of peace, why are you called the Hammer?”
The ghost of a smile haunted his lips. “It comes from a hero of ours, a legend. Judah, the Hammer, was a rebel. A brilliant strategist, and a man who prevailed against unconquerable odds.”
“I see.”
“That isn’t to say, I haven’t used a hammer a time or two in my life.”
After what I’d watched him do today, I no longer doubted it. I hadn’t realized a man could kill with such grace. With such ease.
The thought chilled me to my core.
“Is your name Judah?” I asked, desperate for a distraction.
“No,” he answered simply.
“Then he is…someone to whom you aspire?”
“Fiona,” he said with a wry sort of impatience. “Men like me—men who have titles rather than names—we do not choose them, you understand? They are allocated to us by way of distinction or infamy. Which, depends on who you are speaking to in my case.”
“Do your friends know your name?” I wondered aloud. “Your real name?”
He made a caustic sound. “Friends? A man like me does not have friends. I have enemies and allies.”
He was like a king in an empty castle, I realized, surrounded by a moat that not only kept people out but also imprisoned him inside his own fortifications. How very sad.
“You pity me,” he remarked with a droll sigh.
I was irritatingly expressive when sober, I couldn’t imagine how easy I was to read after nearly three glasses of strong Israeli wine. “I just…such a life sounds awfully lonely.”
“Perhaps, but someone like me is never betrayed.”
“No?” With such a large army—such a dangerous and lucrative lifestyle—betrayal seemed not only likely but also inevitable.
“It is only possible to suffer betrayal at the hands of someone you love or someone you trust,” he explained, reading my thoughts. “I only trust that a man—or woman—will act in their own self-interest. I am never disappointed. And I am never betrayed.”
“Is that what you did today when you rescued me? Was that done in the name of self-interest?” Because it felt like altruism to me.
He stared at me for a heartbeat longer than I expected. “If something happened to you, who else would hide the bodies, Fiona? Who else would clean up the blood?”
“Plenty of people, I imagine, if you appealed to their self-interest.”
His laugh drew the notice of many, but none so much as I. It was easy to forget how flattering candlelight was. And hard to remember its tendency to play tricks. In such golden, warm light, a cruel man could appear kind. An older man, younger. A lethal man, friendly.
“Tell me your name,” I breathed.
The air around us alt
ered. Thickened. Until the gilded haze became both a color and a sensation.
“I have many.” I could tell his coy smile had been perfected on many women. That should have incensed me, but it didn’t.
“Don’t be obtuse. What is the one your mother gave you?” I’d not have dared speak so tartly some time ago, but I was beginning to understand that the Hammer enjoyed it when I challenged him. Whether he knew it or not.
“I never knew my mother. Did you?” he challenged back, though there was no real heat in it.
“For a short time, yes. She died in childbirth when I was young. I was raised by my father and four older brothers. And I helped raise two more.”
“Then, you are well acquainted in the ways of men?”
Not in any meaningful way. The boys in the house I was raised in were odious creatures with dubious hygiene and abhorrent manners. I could not even begin to imagine the poised, starched gangster stepping a well-soled foot into the Mahoney household of yore without dissolving into a fit of mirth.
I wrinkled my nose to hide a smirk. “I…suppose I am.”
“Don't let anyone ever tell you that is an unremarkable thing.” He regarded me for a tentative moment. “Would you like to stay here and have dinner with me?”
The thought of taking another hansom back to Chelsea dropped my heart into my belly. Furthermore, I most certainly didn’t have the courage to walk the streets just yet. “I might as well. Until the streets are safe.”
“You might as well…” he repeated as though the phrase delighted him. “Women do not generally accept my invitations with such blatant insouciance.”
“You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not well practiced in what women generally do.”
“Decidedly not.” He didn’t seem to think that was a mark against me.
“I’ll need to send word to Polly, my maid. My Aunt Nola is expecting me for the evening meal, I don’t want to worry her.”
The Business of Blood Page 20