What Remains of Heaven

the scent of hemp and tar and the whirl of the spinning fibers. “She’s not with you today?”

“She would have come, but she wanted to finish the letter she’s writing to her father.” The old man’s smile slipped slightly at the thought of his wayward son. “He keeps promising to visit her, but he never comes. He has my father’s papers, you know. I’ve been pressing him to publish them; I’ve even offered to help. But he’ll have none of it.”

Sebastian studied the American’s timeworn face. From what Sebastian had been able to learn, the domestic arrangements of the Franklin males tended to follow a similar, bizarre pattern. An illegitimate son himself, William Franklin had abandoned his own illegitimate son, Temple, to be raised by Benjamin. And Temple Franklin had, in turn, abandoned his illegitimate daughter, Ellen, to be raised by William. They were a brilliant but peculiar family. But then, Sebastian thought, perhaps most families were peculiar, each in its own way.

He said, “I’m told Bishop Prescott was largely responsible for the Parliamentary Commission’s decision to disavow the majority of your claim.”

Franklin cast him a knowing sideways glance. “So that’s why you’re here, is it? You’ve heard about the results of the commission.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Believe me, Lord Devlin, if I ever felt moved to kill Francis Prescott, it was twenty-four years ago. Not last week.”

“Sometimes these things build.”

“True,” said Franklin. “True.” He drew a plain gold pocket watch from his old-fashioned, snuff-stained vest and squinted down at the time. “I promised to take Ellen for an ice at Gunt er’s. But I’ve a few minutes yet.”

Something about the movement stirred the whisper of a recollection in Sebastian’s memory, a thought that was there and then gone before he could capture it.

He lifted his gaze to the ropewalk, where a man with a grooved wooden wedge known as a “top” drew the strands ahead of the twist, keeping it tight. The strands had to be kept under equal tension, without kinking, until the entire fathom of rope was twisted. The standard length of naval rope was a thousand feet.

The length required to hang a man for, say, murder, was considerably shorter.

Sebastian’s hands tightened around the top of the brick wall before them as he watched the strands of rope weave in together. “Good God,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

Franklin shook his head, not understanding. “Think of what?”

Sebastian pushed away from the wall. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Franklin.”

“Anytime, anytime,” Franklin called after him. “And good luck to you, Lord Devlin.”

Chapter 38

Stopping by Brook Street, Sebastian slipped a small, loaded double-barreled pistol into his pocket. Then he headed for Bow Street.

He arrived at the Public Office to startle Sir Henry Lovejoy by demanding, “You said you were going to look into the circumstances of Jack Slade’s transportation. Did you?”

“Yes,” said the magistrate, carefully fitting his spectacles on his face and reaching for a file. “I’ve my notes right here. But I was under the impression you’d discounted the involvement of Mr. Slade.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Tell me everything you know.”

Jack Slade was trimming fat from a leg of lamb when Sebastian entered the butcher shop on Monkwell Street. The butcher had a bloody apron tied around his waist. The hand clutching the thin boning knife was bloody, too, as was the ugly-looking cleaver resting at his elbow. The pungent odor of raw meat filled the air.

Sebastian said, “You didn’t tell me it was Francis Prescott’s plea for mercy that saved you from the hangman’s noose.”

Slade glanced up, a smear of blood darkening one cheek, his lantern jaw set hard. “What if it was?”

Sebastian let his gaze rove the small shop, taking in the sides of beef and mutton hung from massive hooks in the walls. A tray of sausages rested on the counter; the battered green shutter that would be used to close the butcher’s shop when the day’s trading ended stood propped against the wall.

He said, “The thing is, you see, I find myself wondering something. Why would Father Prescott—I assume he was only a priest then, and not a bishop? Anyway, why would Father Prescott intervene to help a man convicted of bludgeoning his wife to death in a drunken brawl? That’s right,” Sebastian added when Slade’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve discovered you weren’t being exactly truthful when you said your wife died while you were in Sydney.”

The butcher sliced a ridge of fat and let it drop into the bucket at his feet. “Reckon he felt guilty. ’Cause o’ what his brother done to me family.”

“That’s one explanation,” said Sebastian.

“What other explanation is there?”

Sebastian shifted so that he had a clear view of the street, where a costermonger was pushing a barrel up the hill toward the churchyard. “Nice shop you have here. Been in business long?”

“Near on five years. Why ye ask?”

“It’s not often a man transported to Botany Bay returns home with the wherewithal to set himself up in business.”

Slade’s head came up, the handle of his knife clattering against the surface of the butcher block. “What ye suggesting?”

“That you were blackmailing Francis Prescott. That you blackmailed him decades ago to get him to use his influence to keep you from being hanged. And then, when you came back from Botany Bay, you pressed him again to give you the money you needed to set up this shop.”

Slade stared at him, forehead furrowed, nostrils flaring with each breath.

Sebastian said, “I suspect he was also periodically slipping you a little sum, was he? Is that why you were arguing with him on the footpath in front of London House on Monday? Because you thought the promise of an archbishopric in his future should increase the price of your continued silence, and he was unwilling to meet your demands?”

Slade swiped the back of his hard forearm across his sun-darkened forehead, leaving another bloody streak. “The Bishop was me friend, see? People know secrets about their friends. People help their friends when they can. Ain’t nothin’ wrong wit’ that.”

“And what secret did you know about the Bishop of Lon—”

Sebastian broke off, his preternatural hearing catching the whisper of shifting cloth, the subtle exhalation of a man’s breath. Sebastian threw himself sideways just as the giant thighbone of an ox still glistening with fat and gristle whooshed through the space where his head had been.

“Mornin’, Captain Viscount,” said Obadiah, his lips pulling back in a grin, his big body filling the air with the scent of hot, stale sweat as he swung the ox bone again.

Snatching up the tray of sausages, Sebastian slammed the wooden board into the man’s face hard enough to send him staggering back against the wall, his face dripping torn sausage casings and ground fat down the front of his leather waistcoat and breeches. With a roar, he pushed away from the wall, head bent like a charging bull.

Sebastian yanked the small flintlock pistol from his pocket and discharged both barrels into the man’s face, obliterating it in a spray of blood and bone. The small shop filled with thick blue smoke and the acrid stench of burned powder.

Jack Slade screamed, “Obadiah!” Snatching up the cleaver from the butcher block, he clambered over the counter and threw himself at Sebastian.

Instinctively flinging up his right arm, Sebastian only partially deflected the blow, the sharp edge of the blade slicing deep. Then the butcher’s massive body slammed into him and the two men went down together.

They careened into the tin pail, tipping it over in a clatter that sent a wash of blood and bits of gore spilling across the floor. Scrambling and sliding in the bloody sawdust, Sebastian managed to roll on top of the butcher. He closed his left fist around Slade’s wrist and yanked the hand clutching the cleaver high over the butcher’s head. But Sebastian’s right arm hung at his side, wet with blood that dripped off his fingertips to mingle with the spilled muck