gentlemen, turned out in curry and figs, in the Indian style, and a pasty of mushroom and chicken as can be put up quick and eaten in hand.”
“The pasties, I should think,” said Hasbro, “and bottled ale, if you’ve got it.”
“They’ve brought us the new screw-cap bottles, sir, just a week back. Would you like six, or would a round half a dozen suit you?” With that the man burst into laughter with such enthusiasm that St. Ives abruptly felt improved yet again, and he found that he was grateful for his glass of bitter, from which he drank deeply now, his ears fixed on the conversation at the table behind him.
“He was a rum cove if ever I’ve seen one,” one of the two men said loudly enough to be overheard, sounding like the cheerful man with the bald-pate. “I don’t trust a bleeding hunchback, Fred.”
“It’s not the poor sod’s fault that he’s got the hunch, George. And who are you to be calling names, an ugly bloke like you with a head like a melon?”
“It was his face what told the tale, not the hump,” George replied. “I half pity the boy, having an uncle with a face like that. Better to be an orphan than to fall in with Old Poger.”
“You gentlemen speak of a boy and a hunchback,” St. Ives said, turning around anxiously. “I don’t mean to come it the Grand Inquisitor, but did you see these two recently?”
“An hour, perhaps, weren’t it Fred?”
“Thereabouts. Not more. Below Wrothamhill, it was, if you know it, sir.”
“On the Greenwich road?” asked St. Ives.
“No, sir. Gravesend road,” George said. “There was a bridge out – what they call the Trelawney Bridge, after the old squire, built before your grandfather was born, sir. Shattered by an infernal device a week past. Your man the hunchback was set to go roundabout through Stanstead, a considerable delay, but we put him right – showed him the tail end of the old Pilgrims Road. He could fetch the highway again at Hook Green by way of Harvel. Beautiful country, sir, out that way, and a tolerably quick route to Gravesend, although it would surprise you to hear it.”
“Describe the boy, if you please,” St. Ives said. He found that his heart was racing, and it suddenly seemed as if the publican was taking an unfathomably long time.
“Small little fellow,” George told him. “Four years old, roundabout. Dark hair. Needed feeding up. Not at all happy, says I when I saw him. He wore a nightshirt with a vest over top and a cap. The man was his uncle, like we said, taking him into London, and they’d set out early, when the boy was still abed.”
“London by way of Gravesend, do you say?”
“Boat, sir,” Fred told him. “Quick enough when the tide is making.”
“You know the gentleman, perhaps?” asked George. “I beg your honor’s pardon for scandalizing the man. I meant no disrespect.”
“Then what
George looked at the table, considerably abashed.
“I am indeed acquainted with the gentleman,” St. Ives told them. “I owe him a debt of some consequence, and I hoped to find him here at the inn.”
“You might catch him yet, if you hurry,” said George. He bit a pickled egg in half and chewed it up heartily. “The man’s wagon had a wheel that was rickety-like. We told him it wanted grease, and to have it seen to before setting out, but he told us to see to our own damned business and let him see to his, begging your honor’s pardon. Like as not he’s sitting by the roadside as we speak, waiting on the kindness of strangers, which would serve him right.”
“And the Pilgrims Road, it’s nearby?” St. Ives asked, his heart leaping again. The publican returned at that moment with the hamper of food and drink, and suddenly time was galloping.
“Easiest way is to catch it
“Another glass of mild for our two friends here,” St. Ives said to the publican, “and a glass of something for you.” He dropped several shillings on the bar top, snatched up the box of bottled ale, and followed Hasbro out the door, where the stable boy held the horse’s reins. Within moments they were on their way again, double quick, not slowing until they were within hailing distance of Wrotham.
“There it is,” said St. Ives, pointing at the road sign, which looked more than a little like a gravestone. “Pilgrims Road. It’s long odds against running them down unless they’ve thrown a wheel, but we’ve got to try, by God. Stumbling upon Fred and George was a bit of luck. Not the last of our luck, I hope.”
THIRTEEN
Mother Laswell labored across London Bridge in the pitiless sun, shaded by a silk and bamboo parasol, which, she was certain, was the only thing that kept her from dropping dead from the monumental heat. She wondered whether the press of people on either side of her would buoy her up and carry her along if she fell, or whether she would be trampled underfoot and kicked into the Thames. She had heard that thousands of people crossed the bridge every hour, a human river flowing north to south and south to north, the current ebbing at night but flowing heavily again before dawn. The water of the Thames moved west to east beneath the granite pillars, stodgy and filthy now at the turn of the tide. There was a low roar of human voices roundabout her, ships’ bells clanging, a constant shouting from men on hundreds of busy decks, masts like a forest of leafless trees against the backdrop of waterfront buildings and docks, black smoke rising from the steam packets passing under the bridge, so that the still air was very nearly as murky as the water beneath it.
Mother Laswell had spent the better part of her life at war with the filth and clamor of industry, but she feared that it was merely another tide that couldn’t be turned back or spanned by a bridge. Coming into London felt like a defeat, and so she rarely made the journey from Aylesford, where Hereafter Farm was a sort of ark, riding above the turmoil, and indeed she sometimes felt as old and exhausted as Noah.
And then she thought suddenly of poor Bill Kraken, who was a good man, as true and constant as the pole star, but with a mind given over to tolerably strange ideas. She regretted not having left him a note this morning, although it was true that he couldn’t read. Still, the absence of a message must have left him miserable. But her business wasn’t his affair; indeed, it was beyond his understanding. The debacle was hers and hers alone to deal with. It was she who had brought it about, and she who would finish it and fetch the remains of her boy Edward home again. She couldn’t abide the idea of Bill coming to harm trying to lend a hand.
Her discussion with Professor St. Ives had called up fragments of unhappy memory that she had studiously kept buried over the long years. After he had taken his leave, she had lain sleepless atop her bed as the slow hours had passed away, afraid to close her eyes lest sleep conjure long-interred recollections in even more vivid forms. Sometime in the early morning she
In her dream she arose from her bed and went outside into the windy night, drawn to the moonlit pasture beyond which lay the deep wood that sheltered her husband’s laboratory. She climbed the stile over the low wall and struck out across the pasture, intent on recovering the severed skull of her beloved Edward, but she saw that her way was hindered by a distant high wall of black stone. As she approached, an arched door in the wall swung open, revealing a room illuminated by a flickering, orange glow. A hooded figure, more a shadow than a thing of substance, moved out through the doorway and was silhouetted for an instant against the orange light. There was the smell of mown grass on the wind, and the sound of chimes as if from a thousand small bells. The figure beckoned to her, and then rose into the night like black smoke and disappeared into the branches of the trees overhead.
Despite a rising terror, she was drawn to the door. She entered the room, where a stairway led downward,
