Beneath London (42 page)

He walked past the mouth of the narrow, shrub-lined alley that led along the side of the house, determined to make his way back to the Half Toad. On impulse he turned down toward the river, however, passing a red-painted door in the wall of the house. He glanced fore and aft, seeing no one, and tried the door, which of course was locked. It came into his mind to knock, and then to simply burst in when the door opened, but doing so would be a rash act, quite likely fatal, and so he walked on.

A man appeared ahead of him, Tubby nodding to him as they passed, receiving a scowl in return. At the end of the alley Tubby looked back, seeing that the man was just then going in through the door, the house swallowing him up. On impulse Tubby retraced his steps, seeing ahead of him an opening in the shrubbery wide enough to hide him.

* * *

H
olding the pitcher handle, Finn stood listening in the sudden silence. It was quite possible that someone had heard. The man’s head and elbow had both knocked on the floorboards, and the noise of the pitcher had been loud. He looked at the man who lay there, blood pooling around his head. Finn was shocked by the quantity of blood. Was he dead? Abruptly the man made a rattling sound in his throat, gasping for air. Finn set the pitcher handle next to the water glass, went around to the side of the bed, and slid out his things. “Did he hurt you, Clara?” he asked as he pulled on his shoes.

“No. He didn’t touch me. He hadn’t time. Listen, Finn. The house is stirring. Can we get out?”

There was a tumult of some sort in a room down the hall – the screaming woman fighting back, perhaps. And now once again there was the sound of a key turning in the lock. Finn snatched open the creel, yanked his knife from its sheath, and leapt toward the door as it swung open.

Beaumont slipped through, pulling the door shut after him and shifting his bag in front of him when he saw the knife in Finn’s hand and the man who lay bleeding on the floor. He carried a fireplace poker. “I heard the ruckus coming up,” he said.

“This is Miss Clara,” Finn said. “Clara, it’s Beaumont, who I told you about. Are we running?”

“Aye,” the dwarf said. “This clatter will bring Smythe, who’s with the woman.” He nodded at the man on the floor. “That there’s Joe Penny, with his trousers around his feet,” he said. “Is he dead? Best if he is.”

“I don’t know,” Finn said.

Beaumont glanced at Clara, who was up and gathering the few possessions that she had carried from Hereafter Farm. Beaumont knelt down and put the iron bar of the fireplace poker across Penny’s throat, but before he pressed any remaining life out of him, the door flew open and a heavy man in a frilled shirt and stocking feet stepped in. He looked down at Penny bleeding on the floor and at Beaumont, who had stood up now. In that moment a female voice cried out, “You’re mine now, Bucko!” and a short, stout woman with wild hair appeared behind Smythe and began beating him across the back of the head with the broken-off leg of a chair, swinging her weapon with shocking force, driving Smythe’s head downward with each blow.

Finn moved Clara behind him and backed away toward the far corner of the room as Smythe turned on the woman with a roar. She struck him again in the forehead, and the chair leg broke in two. Beaumont, who leapt to his feet as Smythe turned away, was already swinging the iron poker, cracking it against Smythe’s wrist, which was trailing behind him. The woman fled away down the hall, Beaumont and Smythe moving out of the room after her.

“Stay here,” Finn said to Clara, and he ran after them, gripping his knife, but there was no opening for him to lunge in. Beaumont wielded the poker like a saber, thrusting and parrying, gouging the man with the point of the thing and then hammering him, the poker whistling as he swung it. The woman reappeared, carrying the broken chair in its entirety, then smashing it wholesale over Smythe’s head, she and Beaumont beating the man to the ground together. Beaumont stepped away, breathing hard, but the woman, dressed in a peignoir, but with her coat over it and her boots on her feet, calmly stepped on Smythe’s face with the heel of her boot and leaned her weight on it.

“You’ve done good work, ma’am,” Beaumont said, gasping, “but I’ll ask you to let me finish it quick.”

“Charmed, sir,” she said, stepping back.

“In the room with him,” Beaumont said to Finn, and the two of them grabbed Smythe’s feet and hauled him through the doorway, laying him alongside Joe Penny.

Finn took Clara out into the hall, saying to the woman, “You must trust us, ma’am. Get what things you need. We’re running.”

“I’m with you,” she said, already hurrying away.

Finn drew the door shut, having no real idea what Clara could see or could not see. Hearing was bad enough, and he led her farther from the door, which opened again a bare moment later. Beaumont stepped out, his face giving nothing away, and a moment later the woman rejoined them, fully dressed now and carrying her bag.

“My name is Cecilia Bracken,” she said to them.

“Finn and Clara,” Finn said, “and this is Beaumont.”

“There’s gallantry for you,” she said, taking Beaumont’s hand and kissing it, which seemed to stupefy the dwarf, who made a bow before turning away to lock the two corpses inside the room.

Then the lot of them hurried away along the hall, Miss Bracken taking Clara by the arm now and nodding to Finn as if giving him leave to do what he must. He wished that she had brought one of the remaining chair legs.

Down the stairs they went, Finn and Beaumont ahead and the women behind.

Into the lion’s den
, Finn thought. Then he saw the shadows of two men ascending, followed by the men themselves, looking upward, coming along in a rush. Finn bent at the knees and launched himself from the edge of a stair tread, rolling himself into a ball and striking both men at once and bowling them over. The three of them tumbled downward in a tangle, Finn’s creel smashing to bits beneath him.

Finn rolled out onto the landing and onto his feet. His carved owl caromed off the wainscot, and Finn snatched it up and pocketed it just as Beaumont ranged in among them, swinging his poker, his face strangely calm. Miss Bracken helped Clara past the sprawled men, and they were off again, down the last set of stairs to the ground floor, where a strange-looking, skeletal woman in an old green gown shouted incoherencies.

“Shut your gob, Mrs. Skink,” Beaumont yelled at her.

Miss Bracken stepped past him, leaving Clara behind, and ran forward and struck Mrs. Skink hard on the side of the head with her fist, then pushed her over backward onto a wooden settle. She bent down and picked up the front of the settle and flung it over backward again, Mrs. Skink shouting “Oh! Oh! Oh!” as she rolled into the wall, the settle lying atop her.

Again they were running, Finn holding Clara’s hand, Miss Bracken following. They were in a long hallway now, nothing to trip them up, a door at the far end – freedom if they could open it! He heard the sounds of pursuit from somewhere behind and a muffled shouting from Mrs. Skink. Finn saw that the door was barred, and with a heavy lock for good measure. A man looked out of a door on the left-hand side of the hallway, and then disappeared back into whatever room lay there. Beaumont, running swiftly on his short legs and waving his fireplace poker over his head, dipped into his pocket and came up with a key that he tossed at Finn before turning into the open doorway where the man had vanished.

Finn snatched the flying key, left Clara with Miss Bracken again, and opened the lock as quickly as he could, then yanked the bar out of its place, snapped open the Chubb lock, and flung back the door onto blessed daylight. He stepped aside so that Miss Bracken could haul Clara out past him. From the corner of his eye Finn saw Beaumont coming back toward him. Behind the dwarf a man pushed himself to his feet, a bloody gash on his chin.

Now there were three more men – four – coming on hard behind, pouring into the hallway in a rout. “Out! Out!” Beaumont shouted, pushing Finn from behind, and out they went, Beaumont pulling the door shut. Finn heard the Chubb lock engage with a metallic clank. He also heard Mrs. Bracken wheezing to catch her breath, Clara holding tightly to her; neither was moving. Then Finn saw a man, very heavy and powerful, step half out of the bushes several yards along the alley. He stood waiting in the shadows, holding a cudgel – the end of things, Finn thought.

Except that it wasn’t the end of things. It was Tubby Frobisher, like an angel come from the sky. “Tubby!” Finn shouted, following Miss Bracken down the three stairs, Beaumont at his heels.

Tubby stepped aside and waved them past, the surprise on his face equal, surely, to Finn’s own. “Go on, then!” Tubby cried.

Finn looked back to see Tubby wading toward the men just then coming through the door, a two-handed grip on his stick.

* * *

I
t was an escape, and no doubt about it, Tubby thought as he stepped aside to let the four pass, immensely surprised that it was Cecilia Bracken who leapt past him, her hatless hair flying about her head, and she holding the hand of an apparently blind girl wearing smoked glasses – certainly the girl Clara, Mother Laswell’s charge. Finn Conrad plunged past, followed by the strangest dwarf Tubby had ever seen. He was carrying a flour sack in one hand and holding tight to an enormous beaver hat with the other, a hat big enough to contain a severed head as well as the dwarf’s own.

Four men bowled out from within the house now, two of them turning away – up toward Lazarus Walk – and the other two running straight at Tubby, obviously pursuing those who had fled. The men slowed at the sight of him, but then came on again, running hard.

THIRTY-THREE

F
inn and his three companions rounded the corner, Clara running flat-footed but gamely in her lead-soled shoes, her gown hiked up to her knees. Finn held onto her hand now, and she showed no hesitation, but trusted him utterly. Beaumont had run on ahead, but Finn, determined to leave no one behind, had no intention of outpacing Miss Bracken. They dodged the traffic and pedestrians on the Embankment, hurried beneath the leafless trees, and descended a set of stone stairs to the river, where a man in a rowing boat was just shipping his oars as another man stepped out onto a small pier and tied a line to a bollard. Finn tipped his cap, and the two men nodded back at him, giving him a curious look. The four of them were well worth staring at, Finn thought, which was problematic.

Beaumont led the way beneath Blackfriars Rail Bridge, turning uphill in the shadow of the bridge toward the Embankment again. He drew to a halt between two heavy stanchions, further hidden by the darkness. For a time no one spoke, but merely breathed. Miss Bracken bent forward and placed her hands on her knees, her wind whooshing in and out of her lungs. The mud bank smell of the Thames was strong, and in the gloomy half-light Finn could see the rubbish cast up by the river. Despite the dimness, Finn felt exposed. They were a curious group, to be sure, with no possibility of disguising themselves.

The problem of Ned Ludd sprang into Finn’s mind – a further complication. He wished that he had included Ned’s whereabouts in the note that he had heaved at Mother Laswell. If worse came to worst, she could fetch Ned herself. But it hadn’t come to that yet. The George Inn wasn’t far away, although how they were going to get there without imperiling themselves, Finn couldn’t say. The afternoon was already darkening, however, with clouds in the west hiding the sun. With luck, night would come early.

“Dear me,” Miss Bracken said after her bout of hard breathing, “I believe I’ll live after all. If we intend to hide beneath this bridge for any length of time, we might as well make ourselves better known to each other.”

“This is Miss Clara,” Finn said, thinking that it was unlikely that Clara would speak for herself, although he was equally worried about being too forward. Clara curtsied but said nothing, and he went on: “I’m Finn Conrad, and we both of us come from Aylesford.”

“And you knew Tubby Frobisher, the fat man in the lane?” she said.

“Yes,” said Finn. “Do you, too, then?”

“Indeed I do. I’m betrothed to that man’s uncle.”