Beneath London (23 page)

Finn nodded. There was both sense and nonsense in what the dwarf said, maybe more sense than nonsense. “Where is Clara kept, then? Do you know?”

“Aye, away up on the fourth floor. It’s me who lives in the attic above her. I saw the man a-locking her in, second door along from the stairs.”

“Can we unlock that door?”

“We might, young sir, if no one’s about. It’s precious seldom, though, that no one’s about in Mr. Klingheimer’s house, it being watch and watch, day and night in this house, four hours on and then a new man to go around for another four. I had my turn for two days of it, but very soon they put me to this here business with the heads, me being handy and knowing something of the toads. In a word, if you’re
seen
, Finn, you’re like as not a dead man. Mr. Klingheimer is a pleasant-looking old cove, but there’s a right monster living beneath the skin and bone, and make no mistake.”

“He’s the chief, then? Mr. Klingheimer?”

Beaumont nodded.

“What if I want to go out again? How do I manage it?”

“The way you come in. There’s other ways, maybe, but not unless you know where’s the keys. Every door is locked from without, you see.”

“And you know where’s the keys?”

“Beaumont keeps his eyes open when it comes to business that ain’t his own, looking out for his main chance, you might say. But he keeps what he knows under his hat till there’s need of it. Mind this, though. I live up top, like I said, looking down on the back garden. I won’t lock my door while you’re in the house, but if they catch you, you don’t know me, or else we’re both dead.”

In that moment there was the ringing of a bell, and Beaumont took Finn’s arm and hauled him through a door into what was apparently a storeroom, for there were crates and bales piled high, sacks of flour, cases of wine – a dozen places to hide. Electric lamps illuminated the room, hanging on cords from the ceiling. In a trice the dwarf was gone without saying another word.

Finn, listening hard, heard a voice that said, “We’re to hunt for a man down below, Zounds, and are to bring him back to Mr. Klingheimer. If he’s dead we’re to bring his head in a sack. Ten minutes from now at the red door. And mind you’re there betimes. His majesty is in a rare old state. It’s
our
heads that’ll be in a sack if we don’t look sharp, depend upon it.”

“I’d pay a farthing to see his
majesty’s
head in a sack,” Beaumont said.

“Keep them thoughts to yourself, Zounds. This ain’t Liberty Hall. Outside in ten minutes, then.”

Finn heard the door shut, and immediately Beaumont returned. “Stay here, Finn,” he said. “I’m a-going out with Arthur Bates. Keep hid. When I come back, I’ll signal you thus,” and with that he warbled out a blackbird’s call, uncannily clear. Then he put his finger beside his nose and winked.

SEVENTEEN

A
fter a steep ascent, the tunnel through which St. Ives traveled took a hard right turning. Abruptly the walls were built of cut stone – not the stone that he had found in the ancient downward stairway earlier in his travels, but stones with heavily mortared joints, walls that were quite likely Medieval in origin. Given that he had been walking at a steady pace, checking his compass along the way, dead reckoning would have it that he was beneath north London, perhaps beneath Hampstead Heath itself, although admittedly the reckoning had been confounded by twistings and turnings and traveling uphill and down.

He came upon an arched doorway with its heavy door standing open on old bronze hinges that were set into the walls with massive bolts. A length of wood that pivoted on an iron rod pinned the door shut. Rubbing had grooved a quarter circle into the door where the wood had been shifted back and forth, and St. Ives opened it easily, moving it upward from where it lay against a second short rod. He pulled the door open, and realized that he had come to the end of his journey, or nearly so. The way beyond the door was level, a corridor that led to a short set of stairs. There were fairly fresh clots of dirt on the floor, crushed by the wheel of the cart.

What would be the point in taking out the dead Narbondo, St. Ives wondered as he walked along the corridor. But in that same vein, why take out the
living
Narbondo? To extract him from the grip of the fungi? Why? Not pity, for Narbondo had neither friends nor living family, aside from Mother Laswell, who had herself tried her best to shoot him when last she saw him, an infamous act only in theory. In truth there was no one alive who would be unhappy to see Narbondo dead.

The thought of Mother Laswell brought to mind the murder of Sarah Wright. Mother Laswell had feared that her own dead husband had been the source of this new trouble, and she had been worried that the man’s severed head might have been dug up from beneath the floorboards of Sarah Wright’s cottage in Boxley Woods. She supposed, in other words, that someone was actively searching for the head of Maurice De Salles, the stepfather and paternal uncle of Ignacio Narbondo – the same someone who had taken the head of Sarah Wright. And now someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to collect Narbondo into the bargain. The several acts might be coincidental, but it would be folly to assume so.

Who are you?
he wondered, ascending now into a small antechamber, scattered with a lumber of ancient furniture: wooden pews, an altar, a cabinet with the door fallen from the hinges. On the cabinet shelves lay what appeared to be sacred vestments, neatly folded and put away many years since, and next to them a chalice covered by a chalice cloth that was more web than fabric, and a censer that hung from a dowel. He was in a priest’s hole, of that there could be no doubt, a remnant of England’s centuries-long war on Catholicism. He wondered how many priests had hidden here, and whether any of them had escaped into the underworld beyond the arched door. A stone stairs stood in the center of the room forming a landing on top. Above it a large trap-door was set into the ceiling, the wood dark and old but reinforced with iron cleats.

He climbed the stairs, set his knapsack and lamp on the landing, and knelt beneath the trap, putting his back against it and heaving it upward despite his protesting ribs. Dust and debris fell into his hair. He put his hand into the opening and felt the heavy, woven material of a carpet, perhaps weighted with furniture. He heaved on it again, standing as the trap swung upward, dragging the carpet with it, heavy, unseen objects tumbling. He yanked a corner of the carpet past his head, pushed his gear through the opening, and pulled himself through.

The room was apparently a secret chapel. Its ancient needlework carpet, framed in vines and blossoms, bore a coat of arms – that of a recusant family, no doubt, that had been threatened with persecution. The trap itself was built of two-inch-thick oak planks with a layer of cut stones fixed atop it, the stones so cleverly cut that the trap appeared to be part of the floor. The rest of the floor was scattered with chalky dirt, and he took a few minutes to sweep it into the cracks around the closed trap, completing the disguise before pulling the rug back over it and pinning it with the pews.

He hurried out of the room and along a corridor, smelling clean night air. Fairly soon he was compelled to turn to the right, where he very nearly stepped into a deep pit. He flailed his arm to catch himself, dropping the lamp into the pit where it smashed to pieces, the light going out. He stood for a moment, catching his breath, realizing that he could see without his lantern. Moonlight shone faintly from above. Some fifteen feet over his head, up a stone chimney, lay an iron grate with vines growing through it. Through the sparse, leafy branches he could see two stars in the night sky and the bright glow of the moon. On the floor of the pit below lay the shattered remains of his lamp, in the midst of which was a length of rope with a block tied to it. They had rigged tackle to hoist out the cart – easy enough to do if they had brought along lumber to crate it up.

A tall ladder was tilted against the far wall. He could just reach the ladder from where he stood at the edge of the pit, and he pulled it across so that it tilted against the wall beneath the grate. It would be easy enough to climb out through the grate and then heave the ladder back against the far wall in order to keep interlopers out. He stepped onto the ladder, pulled himself aboard, and climbed upward, seizing the grate and pushing it up and out. He clambered through, hauling himself to his feet, deciding to leave the ladder where it stood. He would want it when they returned to search for Gilbert.

After setting the grate carefully into its depression and ascertaining that he was alone, he walked up to the top of a nearby hill and into the shadows of a grove of trees. He thought that he knew where he was now, and he hoped he knew what he would find. Given the time of year, there was some chance that he had friends hereabouts, although they were gadabout friends, and might already have gone off to winter quarters somewhere. From the hilltop he looked down upon a meadow that contained two small ponds – Wood Pond and Thousand Pound Pond on the north end of the Heath. On the rise above Wood Pond stood a dozen gipsy caravans. A fire burned, throwing sparks into the sky, and many lanterns were lit, so that the scene was brightly illuminated. Men, women, and children were active on the green, the entire crowd apparently stowing gear into the caravans, evidently getting ready to move on. Their horses – two dozen of them – were tethered nearby.

He was certain he knew one of the caravans – that of the Loftus family, who had camped on the green at the farm in Aylesford just two months past, picking hops and working in the oast house, helping to dry the harvest. The wagon was bright red and with an arched green roof. St. Ives thought of it cheerfully as Christmas on wheels. The Spaniards Inn, where he and Alice had stayed for several nights some years back, was tolerably close by to the west. Alice, in fact, was certain that their son Eddie had been conceived at the Spaniards and St. Ives had no reason to doubt her. Both of them had a sentimental regard for the old inn as a consequence.

Overhead the clouds tore along, and now they covered the moon, so that he walked down the hill in darkness until he stepped into the firelight and in among the people, his happy eyes fixed on the red-painted caravan with its green roof and yellow under-carriage. He might have been a ghost, for no one acknowledged his presence aside from two small boys who gave him a strange look and moved away instead of asking for a coin or actively picking his pocket. There was the smell of turpentine in the air, and St. Ives saw that two young women were busy decorating the red spokes of the Loftus wagon in the light of paraffin lanterns. One of them was Theodosia Loftus, to whom he had once given an illustrated book of English garden birds. The girl was a fine artist in her own right, and had painted a beautifully rendered black and gold carp for Alice.

“Theodosia Loftus,” he said, his voice coming out in an unintelligible croak. Both girls turned to look at him, the one who was not Theodosia leaping up with a shriek and hurrying away, carrying her paint pot. Theodosia, however, looked carefully at him, her face full of surprise and wonder, and then shouted, “It’s the Professor!” She hurried toward him, taking his hand and leading him to a keg that stood at the front of the wagon. “Mother!” she shouted, and then said, “Sit down, sir,” in a firm voice, compelling him to do so by hauling on his arm.

There was the sound of someone coming out of the wagon – Charity Loftus, the mother – who peered at St. Ives for a moment, said, “Just you sit still, Professor,” and then to Theodosia, “A bucket of clean water.” Charity disappeared, returning moments later with a glass filled with what turned out to be brandy and carrying folded pieces of cloth. The bucket arrived and she soaked the cloth in the water and began mopping his face. “Drink down that glass,” she told him. “It’ll restore the senses.”

“Adamina took fright, sir, when she saw you,” Theodosia said to him. “It looked like you’d been dug out of a grave. Were you beaten?”

“Beaten?” he asked, turning in her direction. “No. Not at all, I’m happy to say.”