Welts were rising underneath his fingernails. My leg throbbed. I felt his mood twist a moment too late and I called out, pushing at the doctor’s shoulders and flinging myself away toward the other bench.
“Chijioke!” I tried to scream, but it died in my throat, a blow to the back of my head making me choke and sputter and fall to the floor. My vision blurred, the white droppings on the boards under my fingers bleeding together until the wood looked pure ivory. Scrambling, I managed to hoist myself up onto the bench and gasp for air.
He grabbed my ankle and pulled, viciously, and I flailed, nails scratching down the bench as I fought for purchase and lost. Kick! I commanded my legs. Kick, damn you! But my body was weak, my muscles responding lazily.
“Chijioke—” I tried again, but it came out as no more than a rasp.
The doctor clobbered me again with his fists, and I coughed, lashing out once more with my feet. My heel slammed into his rib cage and he reeled back, but only for a moment. His hat had fallen off in the commotion, flying out the back of the wagon, sucked into the foggy night. Merriman was upon me again, throwing me around, slamming me against one wall of the wagon and then tossing me wherever I might land.
The corpse of Mrs. Eames broke my fall, but only a little, and I coughed, feeling sick and shivery all over. I could hardly see, the punches to my head making me feel dizzy and distant, as though my thoughts and my will to fight skipped away out of reach, abandoning me to listless rolling and moaning. There had to be something I could do; I simply had to breathe. Breathe and fight. I pulled in a shuddering breath, rallying just as Merriman dropped to his knees next to me and snatched up my kicking legs, pulling off his cravat and using it to bind them together.
“It was exhilarating, I admit,” he whispered, tongue poking out as he tightened the silk around my ankles. My throat was closing up with panic, Chijioke’s name just a thought that I could not possibly turn into a shout. The pockmarked ground would make our struggling indecipherable from the bumpy ride. “To slice the flesh from her, to cook it, to know her taste as nobody would know it . . .”
He grunted as the cravat knot tightened, my toes going numb.
“And I confess,” he said, crawling over me and staring madly and sweating into my eyes, “I crave that unholy sacrament. I crave it, dear, sweet, innocent Louisa, and I will have it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
His horrible face was just a brown-and-black blur above me, and then I could see nothing at all, the next blow hitting my chin, rocking me onto my side.
When did I pray? Only in desperate moments. Only when I needed a miracle. Once I had been devout, as devout as my mother and father and grandparents wished, giving hours of my day to a God that never protected me. Then I grew sick of being tested. I grew sick of the excuses. I cannot say if I ever stopped believing, but I know I stopped trying to believe. But now, half-blinded by the pain in my head, tears spilling down my cheeks as I heard the soft, metallic sound of a knife being unsheathed, I prayed. Then I hoped. I kicked out with my legs, punched blindly with my arms, and I wished for someone to make this all go away.
I called over and over again for Chijioke, but blood was running down my throat and my voice was just a rattle. My teeth must have cut something in my mouth when he knocked my head around. His hot breath oozed across my face, and I fought, scratching at him, shaking when he managed to bat down my fingers and clamp my wrists in one hand. I could do nothing now but wriggle helplessly like a fish on land.
Please. Someone must be listening. Something. Anything. The good and heavenly helpers I was told about, or the dark, dangerous ones I know now to walk among us.
My eyesight was recovering, but that only made it worse. I did not want to see this monster masquerading as a man or discover that he was smiling as he hurt me. A flash of silver passed over my eyes. The knife. A sob mingled with the blood in my throat, a sad, lost gurgle that made me feel utterly undone.
Then I heard the distant thunder. He heard it, too. His head snapped up as he loomed over me, and I listened hard, straining for some glimmer of hope. Horse hooves. They were growing closer, coming upon us at a hard sprint. I threw my head back and watched, upside down, as a rider approached the wagon from behind, galloping into view with a gray cloak whipping around her head, as wind-tossed as her curly brown hair.
Mary.
“Stop the wagon!” I heard her voice cut through the painful buzzing in my ears. It was the strong, sure voice she had used when she held me during the storm. The same voice Maggie used when I was in the cupboards and needed someone to say: it will not stay like this forever.
The crack of a whip. A duo of shrieking mares. The wagon shuddered and screeched to a stop so abruptly that the back lifted completely off the ground and careened to the side. A shower of pebbles and dirt rained down on us a half second before Mary jumped from her horse. The beast stamped and circled, but I could see no more of it as Mary landed inches from my head, recovering with a hop before throwing herself at Merriman.
“Unhand me!” he thundered, the two of them tumbling over me and the widow’s corpse. They struggled for what felt like torturous hours, and though I freed my hands, my limbs shook too much for me to be of use. My head pounded and my mouth filled with the tang of blood, my feet numb from the tightness of the bonds around them.
But I could see more now, my vision growing stronger with each passing moment, and I pushed myself up onto my elbows, watching as Mary jerked backward, dodging a swipe of the doctor’s knife. He had been backed into a corner, but now he advanced on her. I felt her feet slip over mine before she could find better purchase, straddling both my legs and the widow’s. His eyes flared and he darted forward, and I tried to brace Mary from behind to make sure she wouldn’t tumble out of the wagon and into the road.
But the work was done for me. The curtain separating the wagon bed from the driver’s bench tore to the side, Chijioke storming into the fray with a roar. Merriman gasped, spinning, turning into the downward swing of a club.
Thwack! Thud. The crunch echoed in my bones, sickening and final, but Chijioke hit him again with the shillelagh, sending the doctor into the wagon wall before he crumpled next to us.
“Heavens, Louisa, are you all right?” Mary turned and dropped down next to me, tearing at the cravat tied around my ankles. I wiggled my toes, feeling them gradually come back to life.
“Can you speak?” Chijioke tossed the club aside and knelt on my other side.
I shook my head, still a little dazed, my skin alive and thrumming with fear and shock. Mary took the cravat and dabbed at something on my face, blood or sweat or both. She bit her lip and looked to her friend. “Should we turn back?”
“Derridon is nearer,” he replied, scooping me up and helping me to sit on one of the benches. The wrap covering the widow’s body had shifted, one pale, dead hand reaching toward us. Mary kicked the shroud back into place.
“You’re safe now,” she assured me. “How could you let her sit alone with him?”
“I knew he was evil, but not . . . not like that,” Chijioke replied in a whisper. He glanced over his shoulder, but the doctor was motionless, his face purpled and smashed. “It was just a short ride, Mary. I didn’t know.”
I held up one hand, trying to silence them. I coughed, and my voice felt raw and torn, but usable. “It isn’t his fault,” I croaked. “Tried to shout. Wheels too loud.”
“What do we do?” Mary searched the wagon for answers, still dabbing at my face.
“He’s gone. We take him and the widow woman to the undertaker. Mr. Morningside will just have to understand. Aye, we can tend to Louisa there. Here, Mary, give me your cloak.” She untied the cozy gray cape and handed it across. Chijioke motioned for me to lean forward, and gingerly, he wrapped me in the cloak, pulling the hood up to conceal my wounded face. “Can you ride a little longer?”
“Just bruised,” I whispered.
“We will need to be rid of his things,” Mary was say
ing. She stood and scrounged up the doctor’s bag from where he had stored it under the bench. Flecks of bird dung stuck to the leather. She undid the latch and peered inside, closing her eyes with a gasp. Then, just as quickly, she locked the case up tight again. “Yes, we need to be rid of it.”
“What’s inside?” I asked.
Mary pulled the case away from me with a worried glance to Chijioke. “It isn’t important, Louisa. It only matters that you’re safe.”
“I want to know.”
She closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply, opening the latch and showing it to us. It was too dark to see clearly inside, but there was a definite peek of white and what looked like a silky slash of red.
“Bones,” Mary murmured. “And a lock of hair with a ribbon. Don’t look at it, Louisa, it’s too awful.”
I shrank back against Chijioke and pulled my knees to my chest, holding tight. It could have been me in there. It could have been me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Derridon unfolded slowly from my view in the back of the wagon. Mary stayed with me, her horse tethered to the others as we rolled our way into the little town. It was scarcely more than a hamlet, one plaster-and-thatch chapel and a row of low, quaint buildings on either side of a main street. It was all quiet but for the soft merriment spilling out of the tavern.
Mary held my hand, or rather, she held her palm open on the bench and I perched my fingers on top of it, the occasional tremor fluttering through my body.
“How did you know?” I asked. My voice was better now, but it still hurt to speak. “I was praying . . . hoping . . . then you.”
She pulled in a long, shaky breath. Now that all was quiet again, she seemed as frail and uncertain as I. The doctor’s body was hidden under the widow’s cover, but his fresh blood soaked the wrapping, painting a macabre mask where I knew his face to be.
“It’s what I am,” she said. “Ach, I might have guarded you from afar, but I was too weak from the last ritual. I could hear you calling to me in my dreams. It woke me cold out of slumber. I came quick as I could, Louisa, I hope you know that.”
“Thank you.”
“No thanking, please.” Mary rolled her head back on her shoulders, staring up at the ceiling. “You should never have been alone with him. I swear on my life, Louisa, I didn’t know what he was, and I know Chijioke too well to think he would want you in any danger.”
“He ate her,” I whispered bleakly. “He ate his daughter.”
“Devil take him, Chi should have clubbed him a dozen more times.”
“What will you do with the bones?”
“Bury them, I think. Make a little marker. She doesn’t belong in a bag.”
I nodded and carefully massaged my aching throat. “Her name was Catarina.”
“Aye. You can help me make the cross.” Mary pulled her hand out from under mine and touched my shoulder just as the wagon slowly came to a stop. “But you are all right?”
“I will be,” I managed. I hope.
The wagon rocked as Chijioke leapt down from the driver’s box. He appeared a moment later, wreathed in the orange light glowing up and down the street. The lantern lighter passed by with his long metal rod, checking the state of the candles and tending to those that seemed low. Given the strength of the full moon, his job was almost redundant. It was a blood moon so bright it looked like a glowing ruby studding the heavens. Somewhere behind us I heard Lee chatting to his uncle. I searched the storefronts with still-bleary eyes. We had stopped at the far edge of town between the Rook & Crook Inn, labeled with the silhouette of a bird picking up a man by his hat, and a dirty, slipshod sign reading simply UDERTAKE. The N and R had been worn away to a few peeling specks of paint.
“Giles should be inside,” Chijioke said, climbing up and unlocking the gate of the wagon bed. “I’ll distract Bremerton and his boy while you get Louisa inside, then I can pull us around to unload.”
Oh God. Lee. It would be impossible to get him to leave if he saw me in this state. He was too kind, too good to abandon me when I had just narrowly avoided death. While I refused to let a few nasty bruises keep me from rescuing us both from Coldthistle, I would need time to cover up the marks on my skin. Perhaps I might steal some of the undertaker’s cosmetics to hide the welts, enough at least to fool Lee into thinking I was all right. But then . . . Mr. Morningside had been right about the widow. And he’d been right about Dr. Merriman, too. What if Lee really was hiding something unthinkable? No. The attack had rattled me, that was all. I would sit quietly for a while, perhaps have tea or a restorative, then find a way to slip Chijioke and Mary, then reunite with Lee.
“Will you fine gentlemen be enjoying a round at the Rook and Crook?” I heard Chijioke say above the rustling of Mary’s skirts as she slid off the bench and held out her hand.
We stepped down onto the cobbles and Mary locked the wagon gate; then she hooked her arm in mine and led me around the far side of the cart, keeping the tall, covered bed between us and the men speaking on the other side of it. I pulled the hood close over my eyes, and we scurried by the horses and into the shadowy awning of the undertaker’s shop.
As the door closed, Lee’s voice trickled through the glass window. “Was that Louisa? I meant to speak with her here in town.”
I’ll be back to find you soon, I promise.
“Well, something hot to drink is in order for the both of us.” Mary ferried me along, down a narrow passage cluttered with family portraits and potted plants. The floor was swept and clean, but the tiles were cracked and faded. The men in the portraits might have been brothers, each thin-faced and big-nosed, with pointed chins and a thatch of sandy blonde hair greased back from the forehead. The smell of vinegar was so strong my nose twitched.
“Giles! Giles? Oh, where is that confounded man?” Mary searched from door to door. I saw a parlor go by, and a cloakroom, as well as several closed doors with ominous labels like FUNERARY TOOLS and CHEMICALS, SUNDRIES. It was one level of labyrinthine halls and small rooms, each warmer than the last.
“You must come here often,” I remarked quietly, peering into dim corners laden with homemade rat traps. One had been a success, a hairy rat nearly cleaved in two by a supper knife tied to a spring.
“Not me,” Mary replied, taking me around a corner and toward a shabby white door labeled PRIVATE. “I helped Chijioke once before, but normally he can manage on his own.”
As she reached for the knob, the door swung inward with a bang. A man who might have popped right out of one of those portraits stared down at us with eyes blown huge by spectacles. He wore a smart black suit with a purple pinstripe to it and a deep red cravat. A tiny silver bird skull dotted the knotted silk. He propped one spindly hand on his cravat, while with the other he adjusted his specs.
“Good Lord. Mary! Where did you come from?”
“Giles.” She blew out a breath. “We’re here with more work from Mr. Morningside. It ought to have been only one body, but we . . . Well, there was a complication.”
“There usually is. Come in, then,” he said, sweeping us forward and into a surprisingly cheerful little sitting room. The carpets were a lively green, and the overstuffed chairs, resting on knobbly mahogany legs, were patterned with pastoral toile. “Who is this odd-looking child? A new recruit for the armée du diable?”
“She works at Coldthistle, aye,” Mary replied, impatient. “Louisa Ditton, this is our undertaker of choice, Giles St. Giles. The tubby tabby by the fire is called Francis.”
“Francis is off biscuits,” the undertaker informed us gravely. “He can’t jump to the bed anymore, the poor fellow.”
Francis looked anything but poor; in fact, he appeared perfectly fat and happy, purring away on the rug before the hearth. Mary guided me to one of the chairs near a small but healthy fire and removed the cloak snuggled tightly around my shoulders. “Is there tea? Louisa here had a run-in with a bad sort.”
Now there was the understatement of a lifetime.
“Go on,” Giles said, giddy. “I need the local gossip, you see. Business has been rubbish since that pompous idiot John Lewis set up in Malton. I say he puts far too much rouge on his corpses, makes them look like a bunch of blushing Colombinas.”
“I’m sure he’s nothing compared to you,” Mary told him kindly. She took the chair next to mine, lifting my braid to inspect the bruises forming on my neck. “Do you have anything for this, Giles? I dearly wish Mrs. Haylam were here. Her poultice would soothe this instantly.”
“My clients are already dead and unconcerned with mere bruises, but I will check the workshop. Kettle first, however, and a biscuit or two, but none for you, Francis, you greedy lump. . . .”
Francis meowed in protest and turned over, showing us his explosively furry belly.
“I can manage the kitchen,” Mary said, hopping up and going to a white-painted archway across from the hearth. “Chijioke will be along any moment and I doubt he wants to tarry.”
“No, he is always eager to be about his work and I am always eager to watch,” Giles replied, rubbing his hands together. He wedged his tall, storklike body through a door behind me, and I heard his heeled boots clack on a set of stairs leading downward.
“How are you feeling?” Mary asked, busying herself with the range and a heavy black kettle. I watched her through the arch, reaching to scratch the tabby’s neck.
“Like the apple that fell off the cart,” I replied with a sigh. “My wrist was only just feeling better and now this.”