For the fourth time he was sure he heard the sound of bootsteps behind them, crunching the damp cinders on the walk. For the fourth time he stopped to shine his light in that direction, but once again there was nothing. No…wait…was that the faint glow of a lantern approaching? Or some ghostly orb growing in size and strength as it bore down upon them?
Keen had stopped just after Matthew had, and he too was directing his light the way they’d come. The noise of spectral gibbering came floating through the fog; it became a giggling that seemed to be emanating from all points at once, and Matthew now could make out a strange three-headed shape shambling toward him. It was coming fast and would be upon him before he could draw the dagger for his senses and his hand had become afflicted by the noxious spells of Whitechapel.
Then two drunken men with an equally soused female between them came out of the fog, the woman giggling and chattering and grasping onto the shoulders of both men. One of the gents, on the edge of a stumble, stopped abruptly at the sight of Matthew and nearly caused the other members of his tipsy caravan to go crashing to the paving stones. A lantern was lifted. By Matthew’s light he could see that the woman’s garish makeup was so smeared it appeared she had a second face on the side of her head and could have hidden at least three birds in the tangles of her hair, yet the two men were clean-shaven, wore expensive-looking cloaks and leather tricorns.
Matthew had the impression that the gentry had come here to wallow.
“Sir,” slurred one of the men, and instantly the other gave a hard guffaw as if a deballed bull had been given this salutation. “Sir,” it came again, and a laugh the same, “may I ask if you…hold a moment…Wilfred, stop her from squirming. Sir, may I ask if you have any Velvet?”
The question so disarmed Matthew that he couldn’t answer.
“We have money,” the man said. “Our last bottle…gone to piss, I fear. We have money,” he repeated, as if reciting a magic charm.
“We were told we could find some Velvet here,” said the second man, also slurring. “Somewhere. We’re out.”
“Pay him some money, sweetie,” the woman told him. She was hanging onto both men to keep from falling. “Bet he’s got a bottle hid.”
“I have no bottle,” Matthew said.
“How about you?” The first man was asking Keen. “Lord God,” he said to the others when Keen didn’t reply, “these two are dumb as stumps.”
“Stumps as dumb!” the woman cackled.
“You won’t find any for sale around here.” Keen’s face was devoid of expression. “There’s none. Go home where you belong.”
The three seemed to waver back and forth as if this information had been a shock wave.
“Jimmy,” the woman whispered to the first man, and she busied herself fussing with the upraised collar of his cloak, “I told you…I told you…I want some Velvet. It’s all fun and games to you, dearie…all fuckin’ fun and games, but…Carrie needs her Velvet. Now…you said we was gonna—”
“Shut up,” he growled, and when he pushed her face away he got her greasepaint all over his fingers. His mouth above the lantern had twisted. “There’s got to be Velvet here somewhere! Stupid fucks…got to be, in all of Whitechapel!”
“Good luck to you, sirs…and madam,” said Keen.
“These two don’t know nothin’!” the woman squalled. “They’re just common trash! Come on, let’s…oh…oh…shit!” A puddle of urine began to widen around her scuffed shoes. “Find me some Velvet, Jimmy,” she said, in a falsely-giddy voice. “Willie, find me some Velvet.” She sounded like a child begging for a sweet, but underneath the plea there was a touch of terror.
“We’ll bathe in it before morning,” the gallant Jimmy answered, thrusting his chest out like the prow of a battle frigate. Then the three-headed monster staggered away, past Matthew and Keen, and were taken by the fog.
“They’ll be bathin’ in their own blood a’fore mornin’,” Keen opined. “Come on, it’s ’round the corner.”
Unnerved by this encounter, Matthew again glanced back the way they’d travelled. Once more…was that the glint of another lamp? Well, of course it was. Midnight in Whitechapel was the midday of New York; they’d already seen a score of people with lanterns on the streets—and certainly not all of them citizens of the spectral realm—so what of it?
“Buck up,” Keen told him, mistaking Matthew’s hesitation for a loss of resolve. “But you know, you can still jump out a’fore the wagon catches fire, if you like.”
“No, I can’t. Lead on.”
Keen took him to the next corner, where they made a quick turn to the left and went down a flight of stairs under a stone archway. The walls squeezed in to a width of about three feet. “Watch your step,” Keen cautioned, because there was a man lying on his side underfoot. A second man was sitting on the ground with his back to the wall. His eyes were closed, he was snoring and appeared to have thrown up all over the front of his cloak.
About twenty feet on there was a slab of a door with the simple sign above it that said 3 Sisters. The place looked like it had no windows. Keen asked, “Ready?” Matthew nodded and Keen pulled the door open.
Pipesmoke, the fumes of alcohol and the smell of unwashed humans rolled out. Matthew followed Keen inside and the door closed at his back. A few of the patrons glanced their way, but immediately dismissed them. It was not a large place. It was dimly-lit by lanterns on some of the tables. A portion of the cracked walls were painted, oddly, a pale robin’s-egg blue which helped the lighting though the painter had given up about a third of the way through and left the rest mud-colored with fist-sized chunks of plaster missing down to the timbers. There stood the customary bar with a bald-headed, gray-bearded keep behind it. Two weary-looking serving-girls were tending to the wants of the customers. The room was nearly full, eight of the ten tables taken. Matthew quickly noted that the prime tables in a place like this—those in the corners with the protection of the wall at one’s back—were already occupied. A scan of the room through the blue pall of smoke showed him several figures sitting alone. Two of them wore cloaks with hoods and their faces were in shadow; their ungloved hands were busy emptying mugs of ale into the unseen mouths. The noise of conversation here was a quiet mutter, though suddenly someone might cackle madly or a fist might pound a table to drive an opinion home.
“Rory! Rory!” the barkeep called him, waving him over. Matthew followed Keen to the bar, where the keep leaned forward with glinting eyes and a sparkle of sweat on his florid cheeks. “When we gettin’ a batch?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“Soon.”
“When’s soon? I could’a sold a dozen casks’ worth in the time I’ve had nothin’ to sell!”
“I’ve had no orders to move anythin’.”
“They’re gettin’ restless! I don’t start sellin’ ’em Velvet real quick, they’re gonna be tearin’ this place down.”
“They look tame for the moment,” said Keen.
“Says you. You ain’t in here hour after hour. Well, shit,” he said, in exasperation. “But I’m first on your list, ain’t I?”
“You are.”
“Hell…I don’t like this way a’ doing business.” The barkeep, perhaps realizing he was walking on unsteady ground, righted himself. “What’ll you two have?”
“Ale and ale,” Keen answered, ordering for both of them. “The nutbrown. And don’t be waterin’ it. We’ll find a place to sit.”
“Pardon,” Matthew said to the keep. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Near midnight, I’m guessin’. Who is this?” he asked Keen. “Fella in the Sisters with the manners of a duke? I’m like to swoon away!”
“Come on.” Keen took hold of Matthew’s elbow and guided him to the nearest vacant table, which was toward the center of the room and in an unguarded position but that couldn’t be helped. They had just seated themselves and Matthew had removed his tricorn when an argument broke out two tables over among four patrons engage
d in a dice game. Foul curses were thrown, a knife flashed, there was a flurry of motion and the man with the blade was restrained by another gent from attacking his accuser; then when the voices had quietened and the tempers cooled all the men sat down again and the game went on as before.
The serving-girl brought their ales and she gave a laugh and swatted at the hand when Keen pinched her bottom. Matthew gazed around. The two silent and faceless hooded figures continued to drink. He saw no one he even remotely recognized. There were some faces in here that, once seen, could never be forgotten in terms of grotesquely-shaped noses, bulging foreheads and lizardy eyes.
“Drink up,” said Keen. “If he shows, he shows. If not…” A shrug ended the comment.
“I won’t know him, but he’ll know me. I hope.” He realized not having a beard might make a difference in recognition, but still…the whole thing was quite the frail fishing-line thrown upon stormy waters.
He brought from his pocket the paper with the six lines scribed by Albion and studied it again. What continued to grasp his attention was the line and D.own I.t fell. Why the periods behind those letters? Was this a message from Albion to Professor Fell? A challenge of some kind, the gauntlet being thrown down?
He took a drink of his ale. One of the hooded figures suddenly began raving, half-shouting and half-weeping, calling out the name of Angela. None of the other patrons paid him a straw of attention, and even Matthew’s was fleeting. That definitely was not his man.
But who was his man? It intrigued him that the name Joshua Oakley had been left at the Pin by a young man who fit the description of Steven, the clerk at the Old Bailey. Of course that could be a common description, but for the moment Matthew let his imagination run wild.
He had thought that Albion might be the prisoner who’d escaped Newgate and knew about the underground passage in and out of that particular dungeon cell. Who else would know about it? A clerk at the Old Bailey? Who might have access to keys that would allow him to unlock both the cell and the gate out of the dungeon into the upper reaches of the prison? A clerk at the Old Bailey?
That made no sense.
And why go to the extreme trouble of getting into Newgate in the first place? For the simple reason of making an appearance in Cairo, and performing the theatrics of a gesture?
And yet…there it had been in the payment book at the Pin. The name Joshua Oakley, and then from Mr. Luther the description of the young man with the square-lensed spectacles that made him think of Steven the clerk.
How did it all work together? If, indeed, it did work together, for at the moment it seemed—
The door opened.
Matthew thought it must be just touching midnight.
A heavy-set man with a blonde bawd on his arm sauntered in and they went directly to the bar.
“That made you come to life,” said Keen, who had finished more than half of his ale. “Doin’ some thinkin’, I perceive.”
“Yes.” Matthew folded the paper and put it away.
“I wouldn’t be you for all the tea in China,” Keen said.
“Why is that?”
“Your head must be awful heavy, all them brains in it. Can’t figure how your neck holds up.”
“It holds.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet that when the sun shines on your face you start wonderin’ how it is that a fuckin’ orb in the heavens can be so hot and not explode. I’ll bet when the wind blows a sweet breath up your nose you wonder where it came from and what makes it blow. And when a girl kisses you, you’re thinkin’ of how the lips work to make that kind’a pucker. Am I right?”
Matthew was silent.
“Knew it.” Keen gave a silver-toothed grin. “See, I’m smart in my own way. Hell no, I wouldn’t be you. Too much thinkin’…it kills life. That’s a curse, much as any man ever was cursed.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way.”
“’Course not. Likely it’s the only thing you don’t give much thought to: thinkin’ itself, and that bein’ a chain around you. What do you enjoy doin’, besides workin’ the brain?”
“Chess.”
“Oh, hell! That sure don’t count! What else?”
“I enjoy…” Matthew stopped and scowled. He had reached into a well and found it dry. “This is kind of pointless.”
“Pointless is the point! Ain’t you ever wanted to do somethin’ just for the fun of it?”
“What, like robbing someone or raiding a rival gang’s hideout with the intent to kill?”
Keen laughed out loud, which was not the reaction Matthew had expected. “No, not that,” he said when the laugh had gone. He took another drink of his ale and turned the mug between his hands. His voice was very quiet when he spoke again. “Do you know that I killed—had to kill—my pa?”
Matthew decided to let Pie keep that secret.
“I did. Long story, that is. He was a hard drinker. But he was a right good fella, when he was in his senses…and this was long a’fore the Velvet got loose. I don’t even know if he was my real pa or not…my ma was kind of a cat. But he was the one who stayed on. One time when I was ten or so…he took me to what used to be a stone quarry. Ain’t far from here. They hit water and it filled up, but the sides were high cliffs. He said to me, ‘Rory, today I’m gonna teach you how to fly’. And know what he did? He stripped himself naked right on that cliff, and the sun shinin’ down…it was hot July, I think…yeah, hot July. He stripped himself naked and he said for me to do the same, and I asked him, ‘Why, pa’, and he said, ‘Son, you got to let the feathers breathe.’ So I took ’em off, and there we stood in our splendor on what seemed like the bleedin’ edge of the world.
“Then he says to me, ‘Fly, Rory. Don’t think about nothin’, just fly.’ I looked at that water way down there, and just a little rugged path to climb back up on, and God only knew what kind of monsters were down in those deeps and I said, ‘I can’t, Pa. I’m afraid’. And he reached out and took my hand…and I never held a hand so strong as that one was, a’fore or since. He said, ‘Don’t think about the fear…think about the flyin’.’ I said…I remember I said…‘But Pa, we’ll fall,’ and he gave me a big-toothed grin in that rough-seamed face, and he said, ‘Son…to fall, first you got to fly.’”
Rory continued to turn the mug between his hands. He was staring at the scarred and stained table with eyes that had seen much misery, but Matthew was certain he was at that moment looking down from a cliff upon a shining surface of water with eyes yet full of trust and wonder.
“‘Let’s go,’ pa said,” Rory went on. “He said, ‘Don’t think…just go’. We went, both of us together. I was never so scared in my life, way up in that air, just him and me…but then I went into the cool water and it closed over my head but my pa…he didn’t turn my hand loose. Not for a second. And when we come back up, spittin’ and laughin’, the first thing I said is, ‘I want to go again’. ’Cause it was like flyin’, just for a few seconds. You could spread your arms out and just feel like you was hangin’ there in midair, and in those few seconds nothin’ on earth could chain you down.”
He looked quickly at Matthew and then away again. “Never told this to nobody, but…I still dream about that. It’s a funny thing, though…in my dream I’m holdin’ onto my pa’s hand and we jump off the cliff…we jump and we sail in that bright summer air…and we never, ever come down.” He finished off his ale. “Yeah,” he said, the small voice of a lost child. “Yeah. Had to kill him.”
Matthew was about to say I’m sorry when the door opened again.
In came a slender figure of medium height, wearing a black cloak with a hood over the head. On the hands were black leather gloves. Matthew’s heart jumped. He had the quick glimpse of a face within the hood—no golden mask tonight—as a pair of eyes scanned the room.
This was the man. He knew it.
He pushed his chair back, stood up and dared to lift a hand in greeting.
Albion—for it had to be Albion—took a step t
oward Matthew, yet Matthew was still unable to fully see the face within the hood.
And suddenly the cloaked figure was pushed aside as two more men entered the Three Sisters like battering-rams, both wearing fog-damp cloaks and tricorns and carrying lanterns. In their fast appraisal of the room Matthew saw them freeze their gazes upon both himself and Keen. He heard Rory gasp, “Jesus! They’ve found us!”
The two men—Frost and Willow, Matthew presumed—strode across the planks toward them, after the one in the lead gave the cloaked figure another shove to clear the way. Albion—if it truly was—turned aside and approached the bar.
“Gentlemanly of you to stand for us,” said the lead man. His pallor was waxen and his breathing labored. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Figured you was holdin’ out, Rory. Shame on you! That girl…had to know somethin’. Christ, I can’t talk. Willow?”
“Waited outside the warehouse,” said Willow. “Long wait, but you come out.”
“Figured to see where you was headed. Damn fog,” Frost rasped. “Lost you. Went from tavern to tavern. And here you are!”
Matthew looked past the two men. Albion was speaking to the barkeep, the hood still up.
“Mother Deare,” said Frost to Matthew. “Wants you.”
Now was not the time for panic. Matthew judged what the effect of throwing the table over might be.
Willow must’ve caught the thought or perhaps the two toughs were used to dealing with desperate men, because the snout of a pistol suddenly appeared in his right hand amid the folds of his cloak.
“No,” he said, which pretty much covered all the angles.
“Double that,” said Frost, as the barrel of his own pistol made its ugly self known. “We got a ways to walk.”