Accursed (15 page)

“Excuse me, sir?” Colin had returned, and his voice cut through his ruminations. John looked up to find the valet standing in the doorway, one eyebrow raised curiously.

“Yes, Colin?”

“A Mr. Llewellyn requests a moment of your time,” Colin announced. He had an odd look on his face that piqued John’s curiosity.

“Show him in, please.”

Colin bowed and left the room, only to return moments later with a little old gentleman. It was the same fellow John had watched fighting the flow of pedestrian traffic on the street several minutes earlier.

“Good morning, Mr. Haversham,” the man began. “Charles Llewellyn, from the club. The director has sent me with a note,” he continued, pulling a white envelope from his pocket. “This is for you.”

The fellow’s wizened face was small and ratlike, his eyes two black coals lodged in sunken sockets. John held out his hand, and wondered which gutter in Blackheath had produced this fellow. Llewellyn reached out and surrendered the envelope. It was light as a feather.

“Thank you,” John said. The old man grinned, revealing rotten teeth, or what was left of them.

Colin reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a farthing, handing it to the old man, who nodded happily and made a grand bow to both host and servant. Then, with a snap of his fingers, he disappeared right in front of them.

“What the Hell—” John began, but then he stopped, realizing that this “Mr. Llewellyn” was more than a simple messenger.

“I suppose that’s what we get for associating ourselves with magicians,” he finished, offering a crooked smile. Colin nodded, but still he looked around the room to make sure the old man had really gone.

John tore open the envelope and pulled out a crisp sheet of starched paper. Colin crooked his neck to get a look at the note’s contents.

“What’s it say, then?”

John looked up, smiling broadly now. “It appears our excursion to the Isle of Dogs must wait. I’ve been summoned to the Algernon Club tomorrow at noon. I think our work has received some notice, Colin, my boy. Now let us pray that our evening at the Egyptian shall bear fruit.”

Tonight, he would further endear himself to Tamara Swift, thus gaining a foothold in the famous Swift family. Thank God his cousin Sophia was so easily manipulated to do exactly what he required of her. She had facilitated his invitation to the Wintertons’ the night before. Without her, certainly, he would still have found a way to encounter the Swifts, but her connections made his job that much easier.

His only real challenge came in the guise of Tamara’s brother, William.

He and William had met only once before, though he doubted that the easily agitated Mr. Swift would remember their first encounter. It had been a long time ago.
Well, better that he know me by reputation than experience,
John thought wisely.

He handed Colin the invitation, which the valet read hungrily.

“I think you’re coming up finely, John. Finely indeed,” Colin said, nodding at the invitation.

“I’ll be exactly where we’d like in no time at all—
if
our luck continues to hold,” John agreed.

“It’s not luck, John,” Colin countered. “It’s magic.”

T
HE MINISTER OF
the choristers was looking for a pair of truant boys. He was sure they had slipped away from the others earlier in the afternoon, and he thought he knew exactly where to find them.

During the course of the year, it was typical to find a new chorister or two trying out the acoustics in the Whispering Gallery. He was sure that he would find the boys there, one on either side of the gallery. One would be speaking in low tones, the other listening intently. Even he, many years ago as a young chorister, had experimented with the seemingly arcane trick that carried the spoken word up and across the elliptical dome, clear as a bell.

As he walked past the choir stalls, the minister marveled at the beauty of St. Paul’s. The old cathedral had been destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666, and it had taken more than a decade before a design was approved by king and clergy, and rebuilding had begun in earnest. Now, almost two hundred years later, he could only give thanks that the architect, Christopher Wren, had seen fit to outfit the cathedral with its extended nave and spacious quire, elevating St. Paul’s, in his humble opinion, above all other Anglican edifices.

He had always loved the quire best, probably because it had been the scene of many of his schoolboy triumphs. But there was still something to be said for the rich oak of the stalls and benches, the way his feet tapped out staccato beats as he walked on the cold stone floor.

Somewhere in the distance he heard raised voices, and a childish squeal. This wasn’t play, though—it sounded like alarm. It made him pick up his pace, worry propelling him forward.

He knew there were others in the church who felt that he didn’t discipline the boys harshly enough, but he was of the belief that in teaching one should spare the rod and spoil the child. He was known to be extremely lenient with his charges, and would punish them only if they showed genuine waywardness.

I hope this evening will be a case in point; that the Whispering Gallery will be my only stop,
he thought.

Yet there was something in the air, something that made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand at attention. Something that told him this night was going to be different.

The voices were coming from the southern edge of the Great Circle. He made a left and followed the sounds to where the southern transept connected to the nave.

“Boys . . . ?” he began, but stopped at the sound of hurried footsteps.

The two missing boys seemed to appear from out of nowhere, and ran directly at him. The minister of choristers stepped out of the way just in time to avoid being knocked over by the younger of the two, Benjamin Reynolds. The boy paused for an instant in midstride as he turned his wild-eyed gaze on the minister, then continued onward as fast as his feet could carry him.

“Boys!” he called out, angrily now, hoping to stop them in their flight. But they ignored him. He listened to the clattering of their feet, then heard the crash of doors as they found their way out through the west entrance.

The silence that followed was uncanny.

What in Heaven’s name?
the minister of choristers thought as he stood in the empty cathedral. Never in all his many years had he experienced someone else’s terror so intimately. The very air around him seemed unnaturally cold.

A shudder went through him as he turned to gaze into the shadows from whence they’d come.

A young woman stood there, barely more than a girl. She was an exotic beauty, clad in red and gold, with skin like caramel and eyes that seemed to reflect myriad colors in the flickering lamplight. Behind her there were only shadows.

“What’s this, then?” the minister asked. “What are you doing back there, miss?”

With a smile that stirred forbidden desires within him, she took a step backward and seemed to be swallowed by the shadows.

“See here, miss, you can’t—” he began, but then stopped himself. He had the strangest feeling that she was not merely hidden in darkness, but no longer there at all—that he was talking to himself.

The minister frowned, thinking again of those terrified boys. Surely they had not been frightened by the sudden appearance of a beautiful woman. Boys were boys, after all.

Confused, he went to the narrow stairs and started down to the catacombs beneath the cathedral. He had never enjoyed going down here, had always found the place a bit morbid, in fact. But he did so now, and wondered where the woman had gone, and why the boys had chosen to wander among the crypts. As youngsters he and his friends had avoided the place, but then again, he had never been terribly adventurous.

If it had been chilly up above, it was colder down here than he liked. He had never been partial to London weather, but this was different. There was something
strange
about this coldness, as though all the warmth had been leached away. He felt chill bumps rise all over his body, and his chest ached as he drew in a frigid breath.

He smelled them before he saw them.

They were enormous things, with a reptilian aspect that conjured ancient, primal terror in his heart. Their skulls were swollen approximations of human heads, their skin varying shades of mottled brown and green, rough as though covered with scales. They plunged their long arms and thick, webbed hands into a tomb that had been forced open, stone fragments scattered in a tumble on the ground.

Others had been shattered, as well. The withered remains of the honored dead had been torn from their crypts, bones and rotting clothing strewn across the floor. Lord Nelson’s beautiful black marble tomb was in ruins. Some had merely been staved in, but many were destroyed.

One of the monsters was gnawing on a jawbone. Some of the cadavers were fresh enough to have flesh and muscle still attached to the bone, but the creatures seemed more interested in the desecration of the tombs than in feasting on the dead.

This was sacrilege. An abomination.

He gasped with terror.

At the sound, three pairs of wide yellow eyes turned to regard him. He took a step back and slipped on something wet, then fell to the stone floor. With his free hand, he reached out and touched the substance, recoiling immediately from the trail of viscous filth the monsters had left in their passing.

The stench of the place—of the demons—filled his nostrils, and he retched. The minister scrabbled backward, trying to get his feet beneath him, to pick himself up and run away.

The trio of demons came for him, then, a grotesque rictus etched on their faces, exposing sharp, pointed teeth.

Only when they at last descended upon him, claws and teeth tearing his flesh, did it occur to him to scream. The sounds of his terror—of his murder—traveled up the stairs, all the way to the Whispering Gallery. Forever after, choristers would insist that they could hear the echoes up there, beneath the dome of the cathedral.

That morning, every stone trembled with the sound.

T
he specter of death had invaded Ludlow House once again. The news of Helena Martin’s suicide had cast a pall across the entire household, a heavy, gray blanket of grief that seemed even to dim the light that came through the windows, and made the air feel close and oppressive.

The death of her grandfather was still fresh in Tamara’s memory, and here she was once again, enduring that uncontrollable part of mourning. Memories erupting into the mind without having been summoned, pictures of life and laughter, all so very bittersweet.

She took a deep, shuddery breath and forced away the mental picture of her dear friend. Helena was gone. Tamara had loved her, but her friend would be poorly served if grief was her only response. Something had to be done, and she wondered if the answers might begin with Frederick. There was something off-kilter there.

Frederick had suffered a terrible emotional blow with the death of his half sister. It made sense that he should seem somehow askew.
But it’s more than shock, or grief,
Tamara thought. She wasn’t certain how she knew this, but she was sure of it nevertheless.

There was something Frederick wasn’t telling them.

Tamara stood by the tall windows in the sitting room, arms crossed in front of her, still dressed in her nightclothes and robe. The smell of flowers came to her on a breeze from the garden outside and calmed her somewhat. She had to put her thoughts in order.

“Frederick, please accept my condolences,” William said gently. “We share your grief, old friend, and hope that you know that if there is anything we can do, any service we can provide, you have only to ask. Meanwhile, I’m afraid that my own duties require my presence at Threadneedle Street. You’ll understand, of course—”

“Of course,” Frederick replied without hesitation. “Say no more, Will. It was boorish of me to arrive at your doorstep unannounced.”

Tamara raised an eyebrow at that, and turned from the window to regard the two men. William had stood to depart, and Sophia was perched like so much decoration upon the edge of a settee. Her expression of sympathy was so much like a mask that Tamara almost laughed at the garishness of it. She wondered if even Sophia could tell which of her emotions were genuine, and which counterfeit.