Babylon (14 page)

‘What do you see in him?’ I said as I steadied myself.

‘See in ’oo?’

But what do we see in any of them? I reasonably thought, though as soon as I had, it seemed unreasonable to assume that respect, admiration, and indeed love, would be the same off- world as on Earth Prime. Most unreasonable, given that the alien heart that had always beaten within my breast ached for an equally alien consummation.

‘In Mr Malachi
!’

Her brow creased. She reached out and touched the tip of my nose, as if teasing a lap-dog, and then she smiled. ‘Don’t tell me Maddy Fell is a little bit
jealous.’

 ‘No,’ I said, releasing my hold on her and letting my arms hang by my sides. Now it was my turn to frown. ‘No, of course I’m not. That’s a silly thing to say.’

Quite unexpectedly, Cliticia threw her arms about my neck and planted a wet, intemperate kiss on my cheek. ‘It’s all right,’ she giggled. ‘It’s not like I’d tell or anyfink, is it?’ She drew away and looked up at me with a look of infinite amusement.

The sound of a train whistle pierced the cloying silence and echoed throughout the cathedral.

‘We should be getting back,’ I said.

Again, she placed her finger on the end of my nose and this time treated me to a little, playful tap.

‘Snooty,’ she said. I slipped free of her and began to walk towards the gaping hole in the western façade. Even from here, I could see the train making steam. I stopped and turned about. Cliticia was kneeling before the Black Madonna in an attitude of prayer. And seeing her in that uncharacteristically humble attitude, something tugged at my heart, and my sense of embarrassment, and haste, left me. For a few seconds I contemplated her, in a strange state of bliss, like a mother watching over her sleeping infant.

‘Christ loved her more than all the disciples,’ I said, softly, ‘and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The saviour answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you as I love her?”’

Cliticia rose and came to join me. Without saying another word, we walked, hand in hand, out of the cathedral and towards the train.

I’m not sure how many hours I slept. Five or six, I think. But however long it was, it didn’t compensate for the prostrating disquiet I had endured since overhearing that fateful conversation between my parents and Mrs O’Brien. ‘Mrs O’Brien,’ I mumbled as I awoke, leaving a land of wretched dreams behind, ‘Mrs O’Brien, Mrs O’Brien, Oh what a little sneak of a daughter you have!’ I looked around the carriage. As during the previous leg of the journey, Cliticia and I had travelled separately: I, with Lord Azrael, and she with Mr Malachi in a compartment a few doors from my own. But Lord Azrael was gone. I blinked, forced my knuckles into my eyes, and yawned, still feeling woefully tired, as if I’d spent a whole night cramming for an exam.

I looked out the window. The train had stopped. A platform, like the one that had stood opposite the cathedral, ran adjacent to the carriage, and, a little way beyond, set amidst a wide thoroughfare surrounded by razed, blackened houses, was a palisade. Lord Azrael strode towards its gates. They opened. I caught a glimpse of several tents and a marquee, standards displaying the emblem of the Black Sun fluttering from attendant flagpoles. After a few exchanged shouts, milord began to walk back towards the train, a small party of men in his wake.

Cliticia and I were treated within the strict bounds of propriety. Indeed, after showing us to our own tent, and supplying us with soap and water so that we might attend to our toilette and better prepare ourselves for dinner, Lord Azrael and Mr Malachi had left us alone, as had the half-dozen other Minotaurs stationed at the encampment.

But my sense of displacement had become acute.

‘Is it all going wrong?’ I said, watching Cliticia apply her rouge. Dinner was scheduled in just over an hour, and we had busied ourselves until we were in a state of very real, if discreet, perturbation, so frightful was the prospect of being late.

‘All going wrong? But it ain’t even started!’ laughed Cliticia.

‘I mean—’ I could no longer say what I meant. I was, it seemed, not merely estranged from England, but from Cliticia, too, and unable to avail myself of the confidentiality that normally existed between us—a confidentiality that surely should only be greater now we were, so to speak, two English girls abroad, with only each other to depend upon if worst should come to worst. It wasn’t her fault, of course. It wasn’t even the fault of the Men. ‘But something
has
started,’ I said, ‘something I can’t stop!’

‘Why should you want it to stop ?’ said Cliticia. She held up a vanity mirror in order to evaluate her maquillage, her brow momentarily furrowing like an animal’s that cannot quite comprehend that it beholds, not another, but itself. ‘You like ’im, don’t you?’

‘We shouldn’t be—’

‘The way you looked at ’im when ’e come up those church steps. Blimey. You were fit to—’

‘It doesn’t signify,’ I said, rather sharply. I looked away, staring across the tent at the four-poster bed and its white mosquito netting. The air was thick with expensive perfume that we had transported from Earth in our carpetbag. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if
you
can talk. How long exactly have you known Mr Malachi?’

For a while, she neither answered nor displayed any signs of her customary impatience.

‘Not long, really,’ she finally said. ‘I met him in The Ten Bells, in September. E’ gave me a few bob to keep me eyes peeled.’

‘I don’t understand.’

°E was given to visiting this club in Berner Street, off Commercial Road. Political club it was.’

‘The International Workingmen’s Educational Association,’ I said.

‘Yeh,’ she said, doubtfully. ‘Maybe it was. Malachi’s interested in things like that—sort of setting up ties with Radical groups who’re against the Illuminati. You’d be surprised at ’ow many
normal
men are sympathetic to the Black Order’s cause.’

‘Would I be? I’m not so sure,’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘Anyway, ’e didn’t want anyone to see ’im going in, and ’e didn’t want anyone to see ’im coming out. So I stood outside for a while, late like, keeping a lookout for ’im. Just as well, ’cause one night there was a bit of a barney.’

I held my breath. ‘An altercation involving a woman?’

There was a pause. And when she recommenced her tale, her nonchalance was too strained, too artificial, to conceal the fact that I had touched a particularly raw nerve. ‘A domestic, I reckon. So ’e calls out. “Lipski!” ’e says. And I’m out of it ’cause it’s obvious ’e don’t want me involved. After all, that was the night ’is lordship was there. And ol’ Malachi always looks out for ’is lordship.’
Elizabeth Stride
, I thought.
She’s talking about what happened to Elizabeth Stride
,
the Shulamite who was so brutally murdered in Berner Street. Does she really not understand or is she only pretending not to understand
? ‘But a few days later,’ she continued, ‘I met Malachi in the pub again. And what with one fing leading to another... ’

‘We should go.’

‘What you talking about?’

I turned to watch her put the final touches to her toilette. ‘We should go. Now. While we have the chance. Just slip out, and disappear into the ruins.’

‘
Itold you before
—’ She had shouted, and then lapsed into silence, in a typical, hotheaded display of pique. I stared at her, hard. Time congealed, as if the cogs and gears of a great, universal clock had become hopelessly clotted with fear. ‘Minotaurs don’t do that sort of fing,’ she whispered, uncertainly.

‘Cliticia,’ I said, trying to keep my own voice level. ‘Do we really know what we’re doing?’

"Is lordship’s a real catch. You like ’im, I know you do. I really can’t see what your problem is.’ I said nothing. ‘Get away with you. It’s written all over your face. No need to be shy. After all, it’s why we came ’ere, innit? For a little bit of romance. You won’t find any romance in Whitechapel, that’s for certain, girl.’

I shook my head, in parlous need of
sal volatile
, then got up and smoothed out my skirts. If all was unforeseeable, and terror grinned at me from out of the shadows, then I could at least find momentary solace in vanity. The carpetbag had contained nightgowns, spare boots, and two extra dresses, one for Cliticia, and one for myself, as well as a selection of perfumes and cosmetics. I picked up a mirror and inspected my handiwork, glorying, first, in the sight of my fabulous Parisian gown, and then in the artifice conferred by rouge, kohl, and antimony. I sighed. My face was enamelled as prettily as a doll’s. I looked fashionably ill—even, perhaps, a little dangerous, the apocryphal sister of Little Nell or Catherine Earnshaw, or some consumptive heroine of the opera recently disinterred from her grave.

I looked like the Scarlet Woman.

(I was inexperienced in maquillage, but Cliticia had been an admirable tutor. It had been she who had suggested that I should use a blue pencil to paint over the veins in my throat and
décolletage
so that my flesh acquired a ‘veined marble’ effect.)

I tossed the mirror onto the bed and quickly took off my dress. Once more, I asked Cliticia to assist me with my lacing. And this time I begged her to show my waist as little mercy as she did her own.

Now, as in the past, an immersion in morbid beauty was the only antidote to the terror of my doubts.

A waltz struck up, played by invisible musicians. Somehow, the Minotaurs had discovered how to conjure music out of thin air.

"It is the power of
vril,’
said Lord Azrael. It was
vril,
apparently, that had brought us here, and enabled us to bypass the Shulamite monopoly on interdimensional travel. For decades, the Men had used
vril
to make similar incursions.
Vril
was the transcendental power possessed by the original Aryans and passed to their descendants in an uninterrupted line as pure as their own blood. It was derived from the Black Sun, the great, chthonic ball of
Prima Materia
that lay at the centre of the Earth. And it was
vril
that would allow them to conquer the world. ‘Shall we dance?’ he added, offering me his hand.

I was in Lord Azrael’s command tent. He wore a blue serge lounge suite complete with fancy waistcoat. On his wedding-ring finger was the skull-shaped
Totenkopfring
that signified his high rank. I accepted his hand and he led me to the centre of the tent, his right arm supporting my waist.

We began to dance.

‘I’m afraid these humble surroundings cannot do you justice,’ he said, as he whirled me about the marquee’s sparsely furnished perimeter. Bed, chairs, tapestries, writing desk, and armoire spun past as his enthusiasm for the dance and my company lent vigour to both his step and the grip he had upon my waist. ‘One day, I hope, you shall do me the honour of accompanying me to the Citadel, where I hope I may be permitted to entertain you in more fitting circumstances.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’ And then adding, careless that he should know that he had worked a certain magic upon me, ‘That would be wonderful.’

The cumulative effect of dress, lacing, make-up, and perfume— gauging by the manner in which I was led more furiously into the dance—was one I believe Lord Azrael appreciated. Against my will, the viciousness of my lacing had me playing the coquette. With my bosom pushed forward over the steel busk, and my heart fluttering like some dying bird, I offered up one of those genuine, pathological displays of femininity that are known to melt men’s hearts.

‘Please,’ I said, gasping, ‘please, I feel dizzy.’

He slowed, then, looking down at me and stooping a little to inspect my upturned eyes, came to an abrupt halt.

‘My dear girl!’ he exclaimed, ‘my dear, dear girl!’ He bent over, put one arm behind my knees, and whisked me off my feet, holding me as he might a child. Then he carried me to a chaise-longue. After laying me down, and arranging my skirts with masculine delicacy, he hurried to the dining table where a cutglass decanter stood amidst the debris of our recent candlelit dinner, and poured a measure of brandy into a glass. His face a mask of solicitude, he returned to my side. Supporting the back of my head with his hand, he held the glass’s rim to my lips and, urging me to drink, poured a little
aqua vitae
into my mouth. I choked, coughed, and then swallowed. ‘More?’ he asked, as he sat himself on the very edge of the chaise-longue.

‘No, no, please, that’s enough, thank you,’ I said.

I looked at him steadily. The alcohol had reached my brain. ‘You’re Jack, aren’t you?’ I said, wondering at my foolhardiness, but so intoxicated—and not just by the alcohol, but by his proximity—that I could not rein in my tongue. ‘The one the police are looking for. Who murdered all those women.’ I took a big breath. ‘You’re Jack the Ripper.’

He looked away, unable to bear my scrutiny.