I turned in Aidan’s hands, facing a wrath I’d never before witnessed as it clouded his visage. “Aidan, listen to yourself. This is all a lot of malarkey. Your guilt has driven you mad, I think.”
He ignored me. “I could not bring the others here to face their Lord as they died.” He gestured to the life-sized crucifix hanging like a sword above the sanctuary. “But the Hammer makes a perfect offering. An eye for an eye. One of the same people who nailed our Lord to his cross will die upon it.”
I pinched my brow. “But wasn’t it technically the Romans who—?”
“He’s one of them, too.” Aidan made a dismissive gesture. “Half Italian and half Russian Jew.”
There was that word again. Them. It sparked a memory of what Aidan had referred to earlier.
I’m martyring them.
“Who else have you visited vengeance upon? Who else did you martyr?” Why did I ask when I didn’t want to accept it?
When I already knew.
Crossing himself, he raised his arms to the crucifix as though making an ancient, Abrahamic offering.
“Answer me!” I demanded. “Did you kill Frank Sawyer? Katherine Riley? Did you make martyrs of them, as well?”
He didn’t have to say yes when he turned to face me. I read it all over him. I saw pride in his stance, in his secretive smile.
So many emotions flooded through me, I choked on them. Gagged. Struggled to draw in the life-giving breath I needed. I retreated a step, well aware of Jorah at my back. “They were innocent.”
“They were damned!”
“You do not know that. You are not the judge of their eternal souls.”
He swept his hand up at the cross. “He told me to send them to their reward.”
“You’re speaking madness!” I gasped. “Blasphemy. You cannot know what is in a man’s heart any more than you can know what a God thinks.”
“By his actions, ye will know them.” He stepped closer, and I began to decipher what was behind the devotion in his eyes. Rage. Desperation. A lethal combination. “I knew their sins.”
Another hot tear tracked down my cheek. “We are all sinners. Will you kill everyone? Would you compel us to be obedient? Doesn’t that make you the devil?”
At that, his shoulders slumped. “Of all people, I’d hoped you’d understand me. You always have.”
“I never have.” I didn’t understand why he’d kissed Mary when he loved me. I didn’t understand why he left me to join the church. And he was certainly making no bloody sense right now. Maybe he’d always been mad…and I’d been too naïve, too blind with love—to see it.
Perhaps he just made a sport out of breaking my heart.
“Do you remember the last time you were here?” he murmured softly. “When you tempted me? When you kissed me?”
I said nothing. He’d been just as culpable in that kiss as I, but now was certainly not the time to press such a point.
“Do you remember the little girl I held in my arms that day?” he continued. “All of nine?”
I did. I remembered the sadness in her eyes.
“She was Frank Sawyer’s temptation. And not his first. The man never fought his wicked urges as I do. He admitted that to me when I confronted him.” I saw the disgust written all over Aidan’s face. One mirrored in my own heart. “What if the child Agnes carries were a daughter? What if he’d turned his perversions for little girls to her?”
I had nothing to say to that.
“Frank confessed eventually.” Aidan turned from me to stare into the flames. “He begged, sobbed, and pleaded with me to take his weakness from him. To grant him absolution. And so help me, Fiona, I did.”
Holy God. Despite my heresy, my own disbelief, I crossed myself. Aidan had unsexed Mr. Sawyer. He’d taken from him the weapon he used against a nine-year-old girl.
“You sent him to Hell,” I whispered.
“Like you said, I’m not the judge. I only do what I’m told. I sent Frank to St. Peter.” He gestured to the stained-glass window beneath which we had kissed. To the martyred man hanging upside down. “A man who knew his unworthiness. Who only received his reward in the afterlife.”
Aunt Nola had predicted that the Hanged Man deserved to die.
Oscar had told me to find Frank Sawyer’s Salome. His desire. His muse. It never would have occurred to me to look for an innocent child.
I searched myself for sorrow over Frank Sawyer’s death and found none.
“What—what about Katherine Riley?” I asked. “You butchered a woman exactly like the Ripper had done.” Exactly as I had explained to him the very morning Ms. Riley died.
Had I given him the instructions for Katherine Riley’s death?
He made a sound of pure revulsion. “She was the worst of the lot. Worse, even, than the Hammer, here.”
Worse than a gangster and a child molester?
“Those sweet, innocent babies.” Aidan’s voice broke, and tears filled the seams of his lids, darkening the whites of his eyes. “They never found homes, not on this Earth.”
My stomach rolled, and I put a hand to my corseted waist. “You can’t mean…”
“She murdered them,” he confirmed. “She took money from desperate mothers, left them with false promises, and strangled the unwanted children in… Cold. Blood. I found her, Fiona, burning wee remains in her cavernous fireplace.”
I’d almost forgotten about Jorah until he emitted a tortured groan from behind me.
Aidan ignored it, staring at me as though I were the only person in the world. As if I were his confessor. “I stabbed her once for each woman I sent to her when I thought her an angel here on Earth. Each innocent baby I knew she’d killed. Fifty-three times in all.”
My heart broke then. Just shattered. Aidan and I wept together as he unburdened his soul, making mine heavier and heavier until I thought I might be ground into the dust by the weight of all the evil in this world.
“I stayed with her most recent victims until they were naught but ash.” He looked down at his palms, fingers spread as though the remains ran through them. “I tended to their little souls, prayed until I lost my voice.”
Sweet Christ. Aberline had rubbed that ash between his fingers, tested it, not knowing the unfathomable contents. I’d scooped out the ashes from the fireplace and dumped them in the rubbish bin, clapping the dust from my gloves and wiping it on my skirts.
The rubbish bins. What a dreadful urn for innocent little souls.
And Croft!
I shed a tear for his poor sister. All this time, he’d been searching for a nephew likely years dead. God, would I ever muster the strength to tell him?
How many children had become victims of Katherine Riley’s greed?
Hundreds, perhaps.
Bile clawed up my throat, washing my gorge with an acidic realization.
“You took her womb,” I realized aloud. “Because she didn’t deserve one?”
“I offered her corpse as St. Inocencia. One of the many named saints who were stabbed to death for their purity as a youth.”
I closed my eyes against the barrage of pain searing the rivers of my tears. Katherine Riley murdered infants. She hadn’t deserved to live. I hoped she was burning in Hell alongside Frank Sawyer and anyone who stole the innocence of little children with their lust, greed, or cruelty.
“The Hammer is complicit in these crimes.” Aidan reminded me. “He sent many of his own women to Mrs. Riley.”
We both whirled on him, and I saw my ferocity reflected in the Hammer’s dread.
“I-I didn’t know.” His struggles renewed, with more vigor this time. He sensed my mercy being depleted with each blow Aidan delivered. “I was trying to keep the women in my employ from turning to dangerous back-alley abortions. To give their bastard children better lives. I thought she was a good woman, a reformed prostitute who would be kind to my girls.”
“The devil speaks with a honeyed tongue,” Aidan hissed. “Him, I turn into St. Bartholomew,
flayed alive, then crucified. His pain will purify him, Fi. But, unlike the others, there is no chance of paradise waiting after death, not for a Jew.”
“Your Messiah was a Jew, was he not?” Time had seemed to rally the Hammer’s fighting spirit, and his lithe body flexed and strained against the ropes.
Aidan struck him, his hold on the calm of Christian devotion slipping into true fanatical fury. “Your people slaughtered him!” His robes flared around him as he turned toward the brazier.
“Wait! Just wait.” Frantically, I placed myself in between Aidan and his prey, holding my hand up, fully aware of what his coal-heated knife could do.
As much empathy as I had for Aidan’s helpless rage in the face of true evil, I couldn’t stand by and watch him brutally slaughter another human being. This wasn’t right. Not only did I suspect that his fury, in this case, had as much to do with me as it did with piety, but his motive was also ethnic in nature. Such motivation had nothing to do with a misguided love.
And everything to do with hatred.
That, in itself, was evil. And if there were such a thing as a soul, as an afterlife, as Hell…this act would surely send Aidan there.
“I…understand your motives for reaping vengeance against the others.” I did. And I didn’t. I’d have wanted to kill both Frank Sawyer and Katherine Riley once I learned of their crimes.
But I wouldn’t have. That’s the difference. I’d have called upon the law.
What about when you find the Ripper? the dark voice inside my head asked. Will you leave him to the police?
Now was not the time to answer that question.
“Jorah is no Pharisee.” I maintained as even an intonation as I could. “He’s just a man. A sinner, like me. Like all of us. The repercussions of his demise could evoke more evil than you could possibly imagine. There is a gang war brewing in this city, Aidan, and he’s the only one keeping it in check. If you kill him now, you doom more innocent people to death, and worse.”
“I’ll repent, if that’s what it takes,” the Hammer conceded evenly. “I’ll offer your church atonement for any sins you deem necessary.”
“Jorah?” Aidan repeated my use of the Hammer’s given name with a treacherous deliberateness. “He is Jorah to you now? What do you mean, your sins are like his?”
“Nothing.” I’d never been more thankful to have kept a confession to myself. Aidan knew I’d sinned for the Hammer, but at the moment, he placed blame for those sins on the Hammer’s own head.
Lord, help me, but I wanted to keep it that way. Even if that wish made me a selfish woman, I couldn’t bear to see condemnation in Aidan’s eyes. Not so much out of love anymore.
But out of terror.
“I just meant that we all have sins that we must repent. We are promised mercy, are we not? It’s not only criminal to do what you’ve done—what you mean to do—it’s a mortal sin. Unforgivable. It’s murder, Aidan!”
His calm had returned, and it did exactly nothing to restore my serenity.
“You think I hate these people. I don’t,” Aidan said. “That’s what you don’t understand, Fiona. I love them. As unworthy as they are, I do. And so does God. I offer them a path to forgiveness. Their only way.”
He softened further when he read the utter confusion on my face.
“I am a sinner, too,” he murmured. “Those beads you found in Frank Sawyer’s blood were mine. Did you know that? They came from a rosary an Apache man made for me in America. I paid him in tainted blankets and faulty weapons. His entire clan died of cholera not three weeks later.”
My lungs deflated. “What?” I thought this day could contain no more declarations of horror. How wrong I’d been.
“You lived through the war on our soil, wrought by these blood-thirsty English hypocrites. You know what it is like. The Republicans were dying. Starving. Desperate. A faction of us with powerful kin in America went in search of aid. We found men of industry, government, and military, Irish Americans who supported our cause. We did whatever they asked to save our country. We made land deals at first. Then arms deals. And, finally, we were told we could keep whatever we looted from native tribes. We were paid for their scalps.”
I’d never seen a man more riddled with remorse. It buckled my knees. My joints ached with it, froze with it. I became paralyzed by his pain.
And still, he continued, his confession clawing at what little was left of my own sanity. “I’ve been the cause of the deaths of more innocent—more innocence—than Frank Sawyer, Katherine Riley, the Hammer, and the Ripper combined. I had a hand in the slaughter of thousands, Fiona. And the whole time, I thought my cause was just. Those heathens had rejected Christ. Declared war on Him. They lost the war, and I knew it was because He was on our side. I prayed every night, and I heard the voice of God. I felt his righteous wrath. But then…there was this village…”
He pressed his lips together and turned his head, clearly fighting the rise of his own gorge at the memory.
“Oh, Aidan,” I whimpered through my never-ending tears. “What did you do?”
He didn’t seem able to bring himself to look at me. “There are no words for it. Butchery comes close…but not close enough. After that, God was silent to my soul. And in the silence...I heard your voice calling me home. But by the time I made it back, there was nothing. I was alone. Forsaken by the Lord.”
He took my hands, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to wrench them away.
“I could not inflict my sins upon you, Fi. Upon our house or our children. So, I made my atonement the only way I knew how. I devoted my life to God. I asked to minister in the capital city of my enemy. To love them as Christ told us to love them.” He bent his neck to gaze up at the celestial mural on the ceiling. “And still, when I prayed, I heard nothing but the pagan supplications of those slaughtered people. I wondered if He heard their prayers, I wondered if He heard their screams. I asked Him again and again. Do you know what my answer was?”
I was crying too hard to speak, so I shook my head.
“Silence. It's always been silence.” His hands tightened on mine until the small ring I wore on my right hand bit into the fingers next to it.
My engagement ring. From Aiden.
I wanted to cut it off. It caused me more pain than just the physical, but I dared not move.
Aidan’s eyes turned distant as he gazed into the past. “I heard his voice when Frank Sawyer begged me for help. When Katherine Riley tried to explain the little boxes of bones in her fire. When the Hammer caressed your cheek.” To my relief, he released my hands to trail his fingers through my tears. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. But you must allow me to finish what I started. What God has commanded of me…or I cannot promise that God won’t tell me that you’re next.”
“Me?” I recoiled, snatching my other hand away from his. Panic laced my blood with shards of ice. “But I don’t hurt people. I’m not a murderer.”
“You’ve enabled one.” He gestured to the Hammer. “You’ve hidden him from justice. Your sins are many, Fiona. Purifying you would be the greatest sacrifice I could possibly make. God has asked for such a sacrifice before, from many of his saints. Think of Abraham.”
I’d begun my retreat in earnest until my hip bumped against the altar. This couldn’t be. To fear the man I loved, the boy I’d trusted with all of myself for so many years, was the worst loss I’d suffered thus far.
He reached out, and I shrank away.
“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed, pointing back up at the stiff, ever-merciful visage of the crucified Lord. “He will forgive you, too. If you take up the sword for Him.” Aidan reached toward the knife, and my stomach plummeted to the floor.
We weren’t all surviving this, I realized. He wasn’t going to stop until someone was dead. Jorah. Me.
Or him.
“Do not tell me I have to kill this man in order to prove my love for God,” I sobbed. “Such a death is not justice, it’s murder.”
“Tell that to Mary. Tell that to little Fayne as they strung his body—”
I slapped him, hoping to knock the insanity away. How dare he bring my youngest brother into this. “No. Stop it! Stop this lunacy.”
He shook his head at me, unfazed even though a red mark spread over the pale beauty of his cheek. Slowly, he slid the knife from the brazier. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
No. Little needles of black punctured my vision. Anything but this prayer. The only one I knew by heart anymore. Psalms 23. The prayer of death. It had been said over every person I’d ever loved.
And now the only person left recited it over me.
My shattered heart turned from glass to stone.
“There has been enough killing,” I shouted at him. “Enough! Do you hear me?” I spread my arms across Jorah, though I knew the action was both puerile and ineffectual. Why would Aidan listen to me when he heard the voice of God?
I took my own knife from my pocket. One I’d replaced from a collection in my home after the riot. The blade was longer than his, but I knew that meant nothing. I’d never used it to kill before. Aidan was stronger than I. Taller. A trained soldier. And still, I’d do what I could to stop him.
All my pride had vanished. “Aidan. Please,” I begged. “You are the last person in the world I have left. My only link to home. Don’t be this man. The voice telling you to do these deplorable things doesn’t belong to God. It’s the same demon who whispers to the Ripper. Can’t you see that?”
He advanced on me. “…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
“Fiona. Move,” Jorah barked. “There’s no reason for both of us to die.”
Aidan’s hand snaked out to grab me, his knife raised, aimed at my heart. The heart he’d broken time and time again. It leapt and jerked like a captured rabbit, but he was simply too strong. I meant to slash at him first, a desperate and futile grasp for salvation. Still, a lightning-quick movement from my periphery stunned me to stillness.
Aidan dropped his knife. It sizzled and sparked against the cold marble floor of the sanctuary. He coughed. Released me. Wheezed in a deep breath and coughed again.
A dark arm slid around his front and held him fast as Night Horse drove his blade deeper into Aidan’s back, into his lung, and then wrenched it out, allowing the air to hiss out and the blood spill over his hands.
The Business of Blood Page 25