“I recall it with great clarity. It was when Edward was three years old, his birthday, and had acquired some resemblance to a human being rather than a mewling little beast. I felt the turning within you that day, your heart drawn to him, and my share diminished.”
“You imagined that, Clarence,” she said, using his Christian name and watching for any effect that it might have. It apparently had none, except for a thin smile, as if this were a bit of theater to him. She went on doggedly. “It was your imagining that made it so. You see darkness where there is light, and you revel in it. You much prefer the darkness. Perhaps you always did.”
“Those are hard words, Mother, coming from your mouth. I’m quite scandalized.”
“Nonsense. I can see in your face that you’re amused. You know that I speak the truth, and yet the truth is meaningless to you. You knew quite well what Edward’s death would do to me, and it was that very knowledge that prompted you. Mary told me that you capered around that tree like a mad thing, gibbering with glee. She could scarcely find the voice to describe it.”
“She could scarcely find the voice to say anything to anyone. Something put the fear into her, perhaps.” He grinned at her openly.
She raised the pistol, pointing it at his face, her hand shaking so badly now that she clutched her wrist with her free hand. She had been wrong. She
“Return to Aylesford,” he said, the grin abruptly disappearing. “I have work to do. I grant you a boon. You’re free to walk out of this room now despite your waving that pistol at me, although I warn you that you should make haste. You’ve had your audience. Take yourself off, if you please.”
“As God is my witness I’ve come here to put an end to you before I walk out,” she said. “But I’ll do as you ask of me on the condition that I take the boy with me.”
“
“Forgive me,” she muttered to God and to herself, cocked the pistol fully and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew from the gun’s muzzle and more from the flash hole, the shocking noise of the report taking her unawares. Through the sparks and smoke she saw Narbondo throw himself from his chair in the same instant that the window blew outwards in a hail of glass and splintered mullions. The shot had gone wide. She stood gaping, her mind stunned and with no thought of trying to reload the pistol: she would have no time for it, although she had a paper of powder in her handbag.
She was aware now of a vast clatter and shouting in the courtyard, what sounded like fighting. There was a pistol shot from below, and then another. Narbondo was rising from the floor, looking back at the open door. She thought of the boy Eddie, no doubt cowering in the other room, but before she could so much as take a step in that direction, there was a blur of movement before her – someone somersaulting through the shattered window, rolling hard into the table leg, snapping it off, the table aslant now, dishes clattering to the floor. The intruder was up and moving, dashing toward the second room and shouting “Eddie!” at the top of his lungs. There was an explosion from within the room – another pistol shot? – and then another.
In her shocked surprise she flung her own useless pistol hard at Narbondo’s face, clipping him over the eye, stunning him for the time it took for her to heave the canted table over into his path. He tripped over it and went down. She saw Edward’s skull tumble away into the fallen dishes and cursed herself for her haste. She let it lie for the moment and picked up a wooden chair, which she raised over her head to deal Narbondo another blow, but George came in at a run through the open door just then, carrying a truncheon, his face running blood, his hat gone, his shirt ripped open. She flung the chair at his chest, but he knocked it heavily aside with his forearm.
The acrobatic intruder – surely a boy, his face hidden by a ragged balaclava – came out of the room at a run dragging Eddie by the hand. The man in the velvet jacket appeared briefly in the open doorway and snatched at Eddie’s vest. He missed his mark, caught himself on the door casing with his free hand, and disappeared back into the room, as if he were too timid to come out.
The boy looked at George through the eyeholes in the balaclava, breaking toward the barred door and throwing something hard at the floor. There was the sound of an explosion, George reflexively falling into a crouch. Mother Laswell threw herself at George, her arms outstretched, the two going down heavily on top of Narbondo. She felt the hard corner of the table gouge into her side, a sharp pain in her ribs, George clawing his way out from under her while reaching for the fallen truncheon. She saw the boy unbar the door and fling it open. Along with Eddie he ran out onto the landing and was gone into the fog, all of it happening in the space of several seconds.
Mother Laswell snatched up the truncheon in the instant before George’s hand closed on it. She rose to her knees, hammering Narbondo and George with a flurry of blows, the sprung handle of the truncheon making it awkward in her grip, as if it were alive. But she heard the grunts, the men throwing their arms up to take the blows, cringing away from her. She rose even as she pummeled them, stepping clear of the table and the tangle of limbs.
She snatched at Edward’s skull, kicking it away as she did so, chagrined to see two teeth spin away from the open mouth as the skull rolled against the wall. A hand pawed at her foot, now, Narbondo shouting for help in an incoherent rage. She evaded him and went after the skull again, but George was there ahead of her, and she managed only to snatch up one of the teeth, spin on her heel, grab her parasol, and heave herself out through the now-open door with the last of her strength, intent on making away across the footbridge and into the dark safety of the blessedly foggy night.
TWENTY ONE
The fog was a godsend, if only it would hold steady. St. Ives and Hasbro walked along Wentworth Street, which had become a Jewry in the last year, now home to thousands of immigrants from across Europe, a world within the world that was London. They looked idly into the stalls and shops, while keeping up a steady pace, as if merely passing through. They weren’t apparently being followed, however, and with the thickening fog they proceeded more boldly, endeavoring to fetch the top end of Angel Alley at the same moment that their companions, proceeding now along Whitechapel Road, fetched the bottom end.
St. Ives considered the difficult business before him, but found no reliable answers. Shyness would avail them nothing, but there was the danger that a bold, surprising stroke might cost Eddie his life. Narbondo, however, was not only avaricious, but was also inhumanely cool. His most likely response to a surprise attack would be to scuttle away, taking Eddie with him and disappearing into the rookery. There was the odd business of Mother Laswell’s door to Hell to complicate the issue – to stay Narbondo’s hand or to make him even more murderous – but that could have no influence on tonight’s adventure, given that St. Ives had no understanding of its particulars.
He checked his pocket watch, a fine Swiss chronometer; Jack Owlesby carried a second, identical watch in his pocket. It was just short of the agreed upon moment when they entered the north end of the alley, departing the world of something like civil behavior for the stark criminality of the rookery. Both men had a hand beneath their coats where their pistols lay. There must be no doubt in anyone’s mind that they meant to use the weapons if they were pressed, which he hoped to God they wouldn’t be, not before he had discovered Narbondo’s lair and contrived a way in.
Ahead of them sounded the growling and snarling of dogs and the loud voices of men involved in some low sport. Slocumb’s comment about dogs having no fear of pistols came into his mind, and indeed he saw a stack of kennels now, a mastiff slamming into the iron bars as they drew near, anxious to have at them. The human noise of
