Night Music (14 page)

Worst of all, he descried the features of men on the tree trunks and believed them to be the play of shadow upon bark until he drew closer and saw that they were the shriveled faces of those whom he had known in life—knights, squires, soldiers—torn from their corpses and nailed to the wood.

But he neither saw nor heard one sign of life.

•  •  •

At last he came to the edge of a clearing, and in the heart of it stood the king. The mist was less dense here, but the courtier thought that he caught sight of figures forming and vanishing in the clouds, and there came a whispering from all around.

“All hail the Hollow King.”

The king dismounted and walked toward the body of a man that hung from the thick branch of a sycamore tree. It was entirely skinless, its exposed flesh in a state of slow decay, its ribs visible through the holes in its chest. Only the ornate helm on its head gave any clue to its identity, for it bore the royal insignia.

As the courtier watched, the king on the ground shed his boots, and then his clothing, and finally his skin and the flesh beneath, the two halves falling away like the membrane of a snake. Standing in the clearing was no longer the king but a being with a wretched, twisted body, a deformed skull, and a nose that was more like the beak of a carrion bird than the organ of a man.

And though the courtier had never before laid eyes on this creature, still he knew his name, for every land had heard tales of the Crooked Man. Some claimed that he was the union of an old, violent god and a human woman, and had torn his way out of his mother's womb at the time of his birth, killing her in the process. Others said that he had no such origin, but had come into existence with the dark stuff of the universe. He had always been, they whispered, and would always be. In the end, all that was certain about the Crooked Man was the harm he meant to living things, and the joy he took in their torment.

Beside him, his horse began to shy, and whinny in panic, terrified by the transformation, for all creatures fear predators, and the Crooked Man was the greatest predator of all. The horse was tied to a tree and could not escape, and so its terror increased. The Crooked Man paid it no heed, but its cries served to hide the distress of the courtier's own mount. The Crooked Man's black eyes gleamed with all of the wickedness in this world as he bowed low before the dangling man.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “Why, you look almost good enough to eat!”

And with that he tore a strip from the decaying body and jammed it into his mouth.

“Ah,” he added, chewing on the carcass, “if only you tasted as good as you look. And if only your queen would shed more than a single tear . . .”

And as he ate, he spoke:

One tear for a year,

One bite for a coat,

Flesh for a wall,

And blood for a moat,

All to possess a pretty queen,

All to restore a Hollow King.

He swallowed the last of the meat, and a new body began to take shape over his own: blood and bone, muscle and fat, and finally a layer of skin, until at last he once again resembled the old king. Then, exhausted by his efforts, the Crooked Man collapsed to the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

The courtier needed to see and hear no more. He turned his horse and galloped toward the castle.

•  •  •

The queen was asleep when the gates were opened to the courtier, but she had left instructions that she was to be woken as soon as he appeared. He came to her alone in her chamber and told her of all that he had witnessed. When he had finished, the queen instructed him to wait for her in an anteroom and to speak to no one. She went to her window and stood in silence, and did not move from her vigil until a figure on horseback appeared in the distance. Only then did she summon her courtier to her, and as he knelt before her she took a blade from her sleeve and stabbed him through the right ear, killing him instantly. She tore her gown and cried to her guards for help, screaming that the courtier had attacked her.

And all the time, the Hollow King drew nearer.

•  •  •

This I know to be true: there are those who would rather choose false hope over true grief, who would embrace the counterfeit of love before the reality of loneliness. Perhaps the queen was such a person, but who knows to what madness great sorrow may drive us, or the thousand ways in which a heart may be broken?

When the Hollow King returned to her, the queen took him by the hand and led him to her bed.

And as he embraced her, she wept, and wept, and wept . . .

E
ven amid rubble and dust, there was money to be made.

The German bombers had reduced whole streets to scattered bricks and memories, and Felder couldn't see anyone coming back to live in them soon, not unless they fancied taking their chances with the rats. Some areas were still so dangerous that their previous occupants hadn't even been permitted to scour the ruins for any salvageable possessions. Instead they could only stand behind the cordons, weeping for what had been lost, and pray that something might yet be recovered when the buildings were at last declared safe, or when the walls and floors were either pulled down or collapsed of their own volition.

“Buried treasure,” that's what Felder called it: money, jewelry, clothing—anything that could be bartered or sold, but you had to be careful. The coppers didn't look kindly on looters, and in case Felder and his gang needed any reminders on that score they had only to visit Pentonville Prison, the Ville, where Young Tam was doing five years, and they'd be five hard years, too, because one of the coppers had broken Tam's right leg so badly that he'll be dragging it behind him like a piece of twisted firewood for the rest of his life.

For the most part, though, the Old Bill weren't up to much anymore, weakened as they were by the demands of war, and Felder and his boys could outrun most of them. Young Tam was just unlucky, that was all. Even then, it could have gone much worse for him: rumors abounded that Blackie Harper over in Seven Dials had been shot by a soldier while stealing suits from a bombed-out gentleman's outfitters, but the details of the killing were hushed up for the sake of morale, it being bad enough having Germans slaughtering Londoners without our own boys giving them a helping hand. It was also said that Billy Hill, who was carving a reputation for himself as the leading figure in London's criminal underworld, was very interested to know the name of the soldier who fired the fatal bullet, for Blackie Harper had been an associate of Billy's, and good staff were hard to come by in wartime.

But Billy Hill and his kind operated on another level from men like Felder, even if Felder ultimately aspired to similar heights. Felder, Greaves, and Knight: they sounded like a firm of solicitors, but they were just bottom-feeders, scouring the dirt for food while trying to avoid being eaten alive by the bigger fish. All three, along with the unfortunate Young Tam, had, in a sense, been liberated by the Germans at the start of the war, when the prisons freed any man with fewer than three months left to serve, or any Borstal boy with six months under his belt. Knight, Greaves, and Young Tam fell under the latter category. Felder was older, and already on his third conviction for receiving stolen goods when he was released in 1939. He was spared conscription because he had lost his left eye to a catapulted stone when he was eight years old, and was careful to exaggerate the paucity of vision in his remaining organ.

Young Tam, meanwhile, was a mental defective, and Knight had come over from Northern Ireland to find work in London only a few weeks before he was locked up in Borstal for assault, and was therefore technically ineligible for conscription, although he hadn't bothered to present himself to the relevant authorities in order to clarify his status. Finally, Greaves had spectacularly flat feet. All four, even Young Tam, should have been required to perform civilian work according to the terms of their exemption, but they did their best to remain under His Majesty's radar, for they would not grow wealthy digging potatoes or cleaning up after the sick and dying in one of the city's crowded hospitals. Quite the little band they were, Felder sometimes thought: a one-eyed man; an idiot; a flatfoot; and a Belfast Protestant with an accent so thick he might as well have been speaking Swahili for all the sense he made to anyone but his closest associates. It seemed that Billy Hill, high on his throne, needed to have few concerns about them for the time being.

And now they were three. It was a blessing, in a way, that Young Tam was no longer with them. True, he would always do as Felder told him, and was strong and good with his fists, but Felder's ambitions did not allow for one as slow as Young Tam. Billy Hill had no idiots working under him, because idiots wouldn't make a man rich. Early in the war, Hill's gang had used a car to break into Carrington's of Regent Street and nab six thousand pounds' worth of jewels, a sum that boggled Felder's imagination even now. Hill was selling everything from silk to sausage skins, and it was whispered that the war had already made him a millionaire. By contrast, Felder's biggest score had come in 1941, when he and Knight had been fortunate enough to find themselves only streets away from the Café de Paris on Coventry Street when its supposedly secure basement ballroom was blown to pieces by a pair of German bombs that descended down a ventilation shaft, killing more than thirty people. Felder and Knight had stripped the dead and dying of rings, watches, and wallets under the guise of evacuating the wounded. They'd made hundreds on that one night, but things had never been as good for them since.

Now Felder and Knight stood on a patch of waste ground that had once been a redbrick terrace and stared at a house brushed by moonlight. It stood like a single jagged tooth in the ancient mouth of the street. Its survival had no logic to it, but then Felder had long ago learned that, like the mind of God, the nature of bombs was ultimately unknowable. Some hit and did not explode. Some took down one house or shop while sparing all else around, or, as the unfortunate patrons of the Café de Paris had learned, struck with uncanny accuracy at the only vulnerable point in an otherwise secure structure.

And then there were bombs that annihilated whole communities and left, as in this case, a single residence standing as a monument to all that once had been. The house was slightly larger than the ones that had been lost, but not unusually so: a middle-class residence on an otherwise working-class street, perhaps. But Felder had cased it after his keen eye spotted the quality of the curtains at the windows, and a quick glance into the front room had revealed what looked like original paintings on the walls, nice rugs on the floor, and, most enticing of all, a sideboard full of polished silverware. Discreet inquiries established that it was the home of a widow, Mrs. Lyall, who lived alone, her husband having departed to the next world during the final days of the last war.

As a rule, Felder tried to avoid burgling occupied houses: it was too risky, and brought with it the likelihood of a confrontation if one of the occupants awoke. Felder wasn't above inflicting violence but, like any clever man, he avoided it when he could. Still, times were hard, and growing harder by the day. Despite his ambitions, Felder had resigned himself to the fact that he needed to form allegiances if he were to improve his position in life, and Billy Hill's gang seemed to offer the best opportunities for wealth and promotion. Hill would require an offering, though, a token both of Felder's potential and his esteem for the crime boss. That was why, after some thought, Felder had elected to cut Greaves out of the evening's work—in fact, to cut him loose forever. Greaves was weak, and too good-natured for the likes of Billy Hill. He also had principles, to the extent that he had refused to accept a cut of the Café de Paris proceeds offered as a gesture of goodwill by Felder, even though Greaves had not been present on the night in question. Robbing the houses of the dead was one thing, it appeared; stripping their bodies was another. Felder had no time for such sensitivities, and he doubted that Billy Hill had, either.

Felder carried a cosh in his coat pocket, Knight a knife and a homemade knuckle-duster fashioned from wood embedded with screws and nuts, which he preferred to the more traditional models easily available on the street, Knight being a craftsman of sorts. The weapons were only for show. Neither man anticipated much trouble from an elderly widow, but the old could be stubborn, and sometimes the threat of violence was required to loosen their tongues.

Felder turned to Knight.

“Ready?”

“Aye.”

And together the two men descended to the house.

•  •  •

Later, as he was dying—or rather, as one of him was dying—Felder would wonder if the house and its occupants had been waiting for him; if, perhaps, they had always been waiting for him, understanding that the laws of probability, the complex cross-hatching of cause and effect, suggested his path and theirs must surely intersect eventually. He didn't consider Knight's part in the process. Knight did as he was told, and so Felder's decision to target this particular house was the moment at which the die was cast. But Knight could have made a determination of his own at any of a hundred, a thousand forks in the road between Felder's conversation with him about the house and the moment that they entered it. After all, thought Felder, as he bled from wounds unseen, wasn't that the old woman's point? Not one, but many. Not infinite, but as close to infinity as made no difference to a man like Felder, especially not at that most crucial juncture of all, the line between living and dying, between existence and nonexistence.

And, yes, some small consolation might have been derived from the knowledge that this was the end for only one Felder, had it not been the end for the only Felder he had known and would ever know.