Eye of the Crow (5 page)

He is a long way east now, in a working-class area. There are rag-and-bone shops, candle makers, costermongers
and their carts everywhere: an immigrant neighborhood even poorer than his own. This wide road isn’t so bad, but down the smaller streets he sees desperate people walking about, many in bare feet, others lying against soot-stained buildings. He sees Jews too, crowds of them, some selling clothes, yes, with long beards and piles of hats on their heads. Languages he can’t understand fill the air.

There are no gas lamps down these back-ways. Soon the sunlight will grow dimmer; the famous London fog, beginning to settle in, will get thicker. People are rushing home, leaving the main road. He goes by a street named Goulston.

He shouldn’t be here. Sinister-looking men pass, eyeing him.

“Easy mark,” he thinks he hears a dusky one in a sailor’s cap murmur to another.

He keeps his eye on the crows. But suddenly they vanish. They drop somewhere to his left, just a short distance ahead. He is beginning to feel lost. The side streets here seem darker, like wolf dens.

He stops at a narrow one … Old Yard … his best guess as to where the birds have gone. There are two shops on either side of the entrance and their upper stories, grim-looking lodgings, are built right across and over the little street.

He takes a deep breath and ventures down it, his heart pounding.

It is like being in a tunnel. The sides of the two-storey buildings lean out over the road, cutting off the setting sun. Filthy children dressed in rags crawl out from nowhere, begging with pleading eyes and outstretched hands. Others
have lined up their pathetic shoes on the grim, dirty footpaths, hoping for a sale. They smell as if they’ve bathed in cesspools. Many cough horribly, and their skin looks green. These are the sorts of areas where four or five families live in single rooms.

It is time to leave. Past time.

But then he spots the crows down an empty alley.

What are they doing?

He can barely see them. They’ve landed right on the ground. They are bobbing about on the cobblestones deep in the alley, hardly visible in the dimming light. He looks at the street name on the brick building at the corner. It seems familiar. He isn’t sure why.

Sherlock hesitates. He is in an area his parents don’t allow him to even go near, let alone enter. He is beyond late. They’ll kill him when he gets home.

He hears the crows muttering.

He turns down the alley.

The wooden doors on either side are boarded up. They look like entrances to stables that haven’t been used for a long time. There is an eerie silence. He takes each step with great care, as if someone might leap out from behind those doors and pounce.

He hears the sound of caws through the yellow fog.

Why are the crows on the ground?

He advances. They don’t move. Now he can almost step on them. They are pecking at something on the cobblestones. He crouches down. The ground is gray, but it looks different where the crows are, as if it is stained … red.

Then he remembers why he recognized this little lane’s name. He has read it many times in the newspapers over the last few days.

That red stain is human blood.

He is standing on the
very
spot where the woman was murdered!

VIOLIN LAND

H
e runs from the East End with all his might, runs as if he were trying to get away from all the hatred in the world, the brutal ways people treat each other, from whomever it is who murdered that woman.

In bed that night he can’t sleep. He keeps thinking about the scene in the alley: the black lane, crows pecking at the cobblestones, the blood. He had felt watched, as if someone were standing somewhere in that mist, following his every move.

Now he feels ashamed. Why had he been
so
afraid? Would he stand up against evil if he could help? Would he do something? He’s just a boy – a mixed-up mixture of a boy. But what if that Arab didn’t do it? What if an innocent man is going to hang? What if someone is going to get away with something much worse than taunts in a schoolyard … with murder?

No one
is going to do anything about it.

He rises in the morning with dark circles under his eyes. His mother would have noticed. But she has gone to teach three singing lessons: one in Belgravia, two in Mayfair.
His father will leave soon too. He walks five miles to The Crystal Palace every morning, and back again in the evening. He is sitting at their little table, staring blankly while he takes his breakfast, a bowl of porridge and a warm cup of tea in front of him. He wears his spectacles; his old black frock coat is as clean as Rose can make it, his black beard neatly trimmed.

When Sherlock arrived late last night, he had admitted to his parents that he’d been in central London again (though he didn’t say where he’d gone later). He asked for one more day of freedom and then he’d go to school every day. He promised.

“Good morning, Father,” says the boy. He looks in their little mirror to make sure his hair is in place.

Wilber responds without lifting his head.

“Sherlock. Sleep well?”

“I did, thank you.” He sits down.

“I feel that you have a question.”

His father is like that. He has a sixth sense about everything.

“Remember we talked about crows yesterday?”

“Yes,” Wilber’s eyes focus and he looks at his son. “Yes, I do.”

“You said they were smart,” says the boy, leaning for ward.

“Undoubtedly.”

“That they were carrion eaters.”

“Unfortunately. Tends to make folks a little prejudiced about them.”

“That they can recognize people. What else?”

Wilber takes his bowl to the shelf. His mind is beginning to shift to his day’s work. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Can they do anything else that’s unusual?”

Wilber had turned toward the door, but he stops and smiles as he looks back at his son. Lately he and Sherlock haven’t had long conversations like they used to, when he would impart all the knowledge he could to his son, training him to use his brain as his weapon in life. It is wonderful to hear the boy asking questions again.

“Well, some of my colleagues believe that crows can talk, or shall we say … communicate well.”

“What else?” Sherlock stands up, and approaches his father. He doesn’t want to eat anything this morning, and intends to go as soon he can.

“Let me see … they come from a whole family of birds who like shiny things.”

“Shiny things?”

“They seem to have fairly well ordered brains and if anything is out of place they are drawn to it. Shiny things stand out. They go to them like magnets.” A slight frown creases his brow. “That doesn’t help their reputation either. They are considered thieves. A little advice to you when in the company of crows, my boy: don’t leave anything of value lying about, or they might just relieve you of it.” He laughs.

They are silent for a moment. Wilber turns to go again.

“I’ve read that they’re omens of evil,” says Sherlock.

His father stops in his tracks.

“People do evil,” he replies decisively, “not birds.”

Once Sherlock gets over the river that morning, he keeps north through the narrow streets. As he rounds a corner he notices something moving in the shadows up ahead where a lane leads off a roadway, and then a little army files out, like rats coming up from the sewers.

His pulse quickens.

Usually, if he sees the Irregulars, he tries to steer clear of them. They seldom let him pass without some sort of violence, no matter what he does or says. If they catch him far off a main thoroughfare, his chances dim. They seem to hate him. But it isn’t because of his Jewish blood. No, they have Jews in their fold. It is the blue in his veins. They sense that he isn’t from the street, not truly. It is acceptable that Malefactor is so well spoken, after all he is the brains of their operation, has some mysterious past he won’t speak of, and most importantly, delivers what they need in the underworld. But not the half-Jew. He is neither with them nor against them.

The gang leader, as bright as a new English guinea, knows all about Holmes just by looking at him. It is curious though, Sherlock also senses that somewhere deep in that twisted mind the other boy respects him. The feeling is mutual. The criminal thoughts in Malefactor’s head are always magnificently conceived.

Sherlock nervously stands his ground. He wants to talk this time.

They are running right at him. Malefactor stops. He holds up his hand. The army grinds to a halt. There are thirteen of them altogether – their boss likes that number. They dress well, but are dirty and ragged, in a soiled display of soft felt hats, billycocks and caps, graying white linen shirts, and grimy silk neckties, having stolen everything they own – catching young Londoners alone and stripping them bare is a specialty of theirs – that and picking rich pockets. Hangings days are excellent for business. Sherlock has long since detected their backgrounds: seven of them Irish (including both bully lieutenants, Grimsby and Crew), two Welsh, a Scot, and two English Jews. Every one of them is an orphan or the child of workhouse parents, raised in rookeries or on the streets. All this is betrayed to Sherlock in the things they say and the way they say them. But their boss, the eldest by at least two years, is different. No child of a rookery speaks like him.

“Master Sherlock Holmes, I perceive.”

“Malefactor,” the boy says calmly.

“You want to talk?” The outlaw can read his mind.

“It’s about the murder.”

“That again?”

“Yes. Any word?”

“You’ll warrant a major beating if you ask me that one more time.”

“The Arab didn’t do it,” offers Sherlock bravely.

“A reasonable guess,” replies Malefactor as he smoothes out his long black coat.

“Your world can’t be any safer with a murderer on the loose.”

“He isn’t on the loose,” says the thief without thinking.

“Oh?”

Malefactor looks like he’s let the cat out of the bag.

“Move along, Sherlock Holmes.” He glances over his shoulder toward his little thugs, nodding at Grimsby and Crew, who step forward. They love to beat on their victims, and both carry iron-hard hickory sticks for the purpose. Dark Grimsby likes to talk, blond Crew says little. They grin maliciously at the slender boy.

“If he turns and walks now, no hand shall strike him,” says Malefactor. The lieutenants’ shoulders sag.

Sherlock has noticed that the boss’s slight Irish accent grows stronger when he is irritated. The two eye each other. They are both tall boys: skinny with large heads, though the leader has nearly an inch on the half-breed truant, his forehead bulges where Holmes’ is flat, and his eyes are sunken while Sherlock’s peer out. They both have a way of constantly looking about, suspiciously turning their heads – Malefactor the reptile, Sherlock the hawk. Their hair, an identical coal-black, is combed as perfectly as they can manage.

Malefactor first saw the boy on the streets many months ago and picked him out as different, drawn to him as if he were something shiny. The thug couldn’t resist harassing him, but has yet to allow his followers to truly do him harm.

Sherlock turns and walks.

He is half a block away when a rotten tomato, fired like a bullet, catches him flush and splat on the back of his neck. His head turns like a falcon’s. But they are gone.

He stands still for a few seconds. “Curse you!” he finally blurts, frantically wiping the red slime from his coat. “I’ll never get this clean!”

“No
’and
shall strike ’im!” echoes a voice from around a corner, trailing off, laughing maniacally as it fades into the London day.