Beneath London (6 page)

“He’s deaf, the sodding little pip,” one of them said in a voice meant to carry. “What do you keep in that there hat? Thumbelina, no doubt.”

Ignoring the laughter that followed this witticism, Beaumont unfolded his own handbill in order to study it. The artist had got the eyes just right, as well as the slope of the shoulders and the cape tied at the throat. Beaumont indeed knew the man – Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, for whom he had been employed for a number of months prior to Narbondo falling headfirst into the bottomless pit that had opened in the marble floor of the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs. There was a twenty-pound reward for knowledge of his whereabouts, the bill said. Beaumont possessed that knowledge. The address at the bottom of the handbill read, “12 Lazarus Walk,” near the Temple – a posh address, if his memory served.

A shadow fell across the table, and Beaumont looked up to see the red-bearded man standing over him, tottering drunk, although dangerous enough. He had a nasty leer on his face, and he put out his hand and slowly pushed Beaumont’s beaver hat off his head, and then took Beaumont’s nose between his knuckles, pinched it, and gave it a vicious twist, causing great mirth among his friends.

The moment he released it, Beaumont tucked the handbill into his coat, flipped the flute around in his hand, gripped it tightly, and drove it into the man’s throat. He turned away at the same moment, snatching up his hat and running toward the door, hearing the gagging sounds behind him, but not looking back until he was halfway down the alley, pounding along toward the street, where he could easily lose the three of them if they chose to follow. The fog was so thick now that he couldn’t say for sure whether they
had
followed, but it would hide him more easily than it would hide the three of them, and he turned down Lower Thames Street toward London Bridge and the address of the house where he might collect his reward, if he knew enough to satisfy them. He listened for the sounds of pursuing footsteps, of which there were none.

FIVE

“
T
his shrub goes down gratefully,” Mother Laswell said when they were situated around the kitchen table over a plate of shortbread biscuits, and bowls of jam, clotted cream, and lemon curd. So far she hadn’t revealed the reason for her visit, but had kept up a stream of small conversation – avoidance, it seemed to St. Ives. “The shrub syrup is made from cherries and oranges, if I’m not mistaken – a very fanciful syrup,” she said.

“Blood oranges,” Alice said. “Hasbro brought them back from London a week ago. It’s perhaps even better with brandy at Christmastime, but rum seemed to be more seaworthy on a warm afternoon.”

“I’m in complete agreement,” Mother Laswell said, affecting a smile that quickly faded. She spooned up jam and then cream, decorating her shortbread with it before taking a bite and chewing it attentively. “These biscuits are perhaps Mrs. Langley’s work?”

“Yes, indeed. Mrs. Langley is a prodigy with biscuits,” Alice said. “The shrub syrup is hers also. It was her grandmother’s concoction originally. I wish I had half her powers in the kitchen.”

“And she no doubt wishes she had half your beauty. I know I do, although there was a time when I could look into a mirror without flinching.”

“You’ve no reason to flinch when you look in the mirror,” Alice told her. “Your face has more character than any five women together. If I were a painter, I’d make a study of it.”

“I wish that were true,” Mother Laswell said. “I’m an old, foolish woman, is what I am, who has made a mort of mistakes in the past that keep coming round like a bad penny.” She set her half-eaten biscuit on her plate and sat back in her chair, fingering the large glass beads in her necklace – various images of the human eye, some of them eerily authentic. They waited for her to go on, but her attention had strayed to a painting on the wall – two orangutangs standing in the branches of an enormous, vine-draped jungle tree, watching an alligator walking along the beaten path below. “What a wonderfully whimsical picture,” she said after a moment. “The apes are very like angels, watching the world from the heights, with no reason to fear the leviathan. We earthbound mortals, however…”

She looked out the window and thought for a moment. “I value your friendship – the both of you,” she said. “It seems unnatural to bring one’s troubles into the home of people one esteems.”

“On the contrary,” Alice said to her, laying her hand on Mother Laswell’s arm, “it would be unnatural not to. We haven’t forgotten that you rescued Eddie and returned him to us when he was in trouble, and we
won’t
forget it, either.”

“Alice is correct,” St. Ives said. “We’re heavily in your debt, although that puts it coarsely. Please speak your mind.”

“I will,” she said, “God between us and all harm. I very much fear that something dreadful has come to pass, and I’m here to ask a favor of the two of you.”

“We’re at your service,” St. Ives said to her.

“Then you might go along with me in the wagon, a half hour up the road. I’m mortally afraid that there’s something amiss with a friend of mine, and I’m compelled to call upon her. Bill isn’t back from Maidstone yet, where he’s keen to see a man about sheep, and the boy Simonides is too young. I don’t want to go alone, Professor.”

“Then you’ve come to the right shop. Where to, ma’am?”

“There’s a cottage in Boxley Woods, where my friend Sarah Wright dwells. I have a clear foreboding that all is not well with her. She is known to be a witch, you see, and has suffered for it, as is the lot in life of those who can see what most people cannot.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Alice said. “Aunt Agatha spoke of Sarah Wright from time to time.”

“Your Aunt Agatha consulted her. I know it for a fact, as did other women, generally in secret. Agatha Walton strolled to her house in the light of day, however. I’m happy to be able to say so. Children threw sticks at Sarah when she came into the village, and reviled her as a witch, so in time she stopped coming and was largely forgotten. There’s a beaten path from her cottage in the wood to Hereafter Farm, however, and I’ve carried meat and greens and black bread to Sarah Wright for many, many years. She was a hermit, you might say, although she was good company when she had something to say, and she harmed no one.”

She stopped then, a painful look on her face. “I mustn’t say ‘was.’ From time to time the more daring children in the village, hearing rumors of the witch, make forays into Boxley Woods to look at her. At Hereafter we’ve seen them sneaking along the path, but since Bill came to the farm they’ve mostly stayed away, because he won’t allow them to cut their capers. It was this very morning, however, Bill being gone off to Maidstone, that I saw three boys running back along the path toward the village as if the Devil were after them. Seeing those boys put ideas into my head.” She paused for a moment and then said, “I believe that you’ve both met Clara,” she said, “the blind girl who lives at the Farm?”

“The girl who sees with her outstretched elbow, as I recall,” St. Ives said, careful to keep his tone clear of any suspicion of doubt. He had seen the girl’s powers, which at the time he suspected of being a clever parlor trick. He had few such suspicions now, nor did he have any notion of explaining the phenomenon, which was beyond his ken. The scientist in him knew that there was an explanation somewhere, but the other part of him wasn’t as sure.

“Indeed. Clara is Sarah Wright’s daughter. She came to live at the farm when she was eight years old. She was understandably withdrawn, and Sarah rightly believed that the girl wanted company, although Sarah herself did not want company, and Clara had come to fear the woods. I like to think that Clara has thrived at Hereafter, and you can understand that I’m unwilling to allow her to come to harm. In any event, Clara also saw the frightened boys, and fell into a swoon. It was Clara’s… condition that convinced me to come to you. Clara sees what many of the rest of us cannot see. I fairly dread looking into the cottage alone because of what the girl saw, or rather sensed. Perhaps I’m simply being foolish. Indeed, I pray that I am.”

“I’ll just take myself in hand,” Alice said. “I’ll fetch your coat from upstairs, Langdon. The weather is changing. Give me two minutes, and I’m with you.” She rose and hurried away up the stairs.

St. Ives took up his pen and wrote a note to Hasbro, asking him to bring the chaise around to Hereafter Farm and to wait for them there, and then he took Alice’s double-barreled fowling piece from the wall and slipped four shells into his trouser pocket, before compelling himself to sit back down at the table. He was anxious to see this through in order to be back about his business.

“Sarah Wright granted me a particular service once, Professor, for which I owe her a great deal, although it’s nothing I can speak of here, and nothing that I would willingly make public. I was mortally certain that our secret was safe, but if it is not, if someone has…” She struggled to her feet when she saw Alice descending the stairs, and the three of them went out beneath the afternoon sky, her sentence left unfinished.

* * *

M
other Laswell drove the wagon, the three of them sitting together tightly on the seat. St. Ives’s shillelagh, which served him as a weapon and walking stick both, lay on the bed of the wagon along with Alice’s fowling piece. He had no idea of taking the women along to Sarah Wright’s cottage until he had seen it for himself, or of leaving them defenseless in the chaise. He had raised the issue as soon as they had started out, and neither woman had protested, Alice agreeing immediately to remain with Mother Laswell.

His mind turned on Boxley Woods now, which he had regarded through the window not an hour past. He had tramped through it on two previous occasions, searching out mushrooms for Mrs. Langley, but he had never traveled deeply enough into it to see the cottage where Sarah Wright lived. Now the wood lay a hundred yards in front of them, the copper beeches at the outer edge, and the upper branches of the old forest towering one hundred and fifty feet above the ground. Had it been the purple color in the beeches that had attracted his attention earlier today, or had his attention been attracted by something else? By a presentiment, say. It was a novel idea – one that he would have laughed into oblivion fourteen months ago, before he had met Mother Laswell and got caught up in her desperate affairs, which had turned out to be his own.

The wagon entered the wood and fell into shadow. The vast trunks of the beeches were green with moss along the woodland floor, although gray above, the sparse leaves a hodgepodge of browns, reds, and yellows. There was almost no undergrowth – far too much shade – and the beech saplings were puny and starved for sunlight. Mosses and lichens covered the rocks that lay along the roadway, with here and there a patch of grass when a break in the foliage above let in a ray of sun. Mushrooms grew up through the litter of leaves and rotted wood on the ground – blewits were particularly plentiful, and oyster mushrooms on fallen limbs. St. Ives promised himself that he would return in the next week or so with a basket. The family would make a day of it.

But the pleasant idea disappeared from his mind as quickly as it had entered, replaced by a sense of indefinite dread, which increased as they drove deeper into the trees. He wondered whether his mind had been infected by Mother Laswell’s sense of foreboding, or whether the foreboding had some authentic existence. The wind gusted, and leaves fell from overhead and skittered along the dirt track, which had narrowed.

A fork appeared in the road ahead, the track on the right being hidden by leaf-covered grass, as if no one had passed that way since summer had ended. Mother Laswell turned down along the path less traveled, and soon the trees closed in on either side, and she reined in the horses on a clear, grassy patch of ground.

St. Ives climbed down, handed Alice the fowling piece, and set off down the footpath, coming in sight of the cottage within a few minutes. The plank door stood open. He paused, hiding himself behind a tree trunk, listening to the wind through the branches, but hearing little else. Nothing moved. There was no smoke from the chimney of the slate-roofed cottage, which was built of stone and with windows of old bull’s-eye glass. He listened hard for sounds from within, and looked for an indication of someone lurking, but there was nothing visible, neither a wagon nor a horse. He stepped from his hiding place, crossing a board that lay over a deep, still brook, and he saw that a wagon track ran away west from the clearing where the cabin lay – the road past Hereafter Farm, no doubt. A white chicken hurried out through the open door now and ran off around the side of the house.