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“But
why
the Tower of London?” Katie asked, resigned to the fact that she couldn't stop him.

“Traitors' Gate.”

“Traitors' Gate?”

“There's someone there I need to see.”

“Who?”

For the first time since leaving the pawnshop, the frown eased off Toby's face, replaced by a half-smile.

“A traitor.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Butchers and Beefeaters say the Bells of St. Peter's

T
h
ree days later
. September 5, 1888

The East End butcher barn, called The Cut, was a crooked warehouse in a stable-like building with a peaked roof that soared into the cloudless London sky.

Inside, slabs of meat dangled from dozens of steel hooks hung from the ceiling: There were sides of beef, pork, and mutton.

Katie felt queasy as the swaying carcasses overhead caught the light in shadowy reflections. The glistening sheen of animal flesh made the carcasses look as if they'd been polished with mahogany wax.

Holding her breath against the foul stench, Katie peered down at her boots covered in sawdust and speckled with blood from the dripping raw meat.
There
'
s no refrigeration here,
she had to remind herself. Unable to hold her breath a second longer, Katie took a deep gulp of acrid air and tried hard not to gag. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets and wiggled them about. She was dressed head to toe as a beggar boy: battered hobnail boots, ripped knee-breeches, and a torn sailor jacket. Scrunched low on her head sat a woolen cap.

Toby had plastered an eye patch over Katie's left eye, and it felt as if her eyelid were swollen and inflamed under the itchy scrap of wool. Toby had insisted on the patch, as well as grime on her face.

“We'll just put a little ankle and foot on your nose,” Toby had informed her not half an hour ago.

“What's ankle and foot?” Katie asked.

“Soot. We've got to disguise those twist 'n' swirl pink cheeks of yours. Or . . . I
could
knock out one of your teeth,” he said with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Blimey, pet. No larkin' about this time. Remember,” he continued in a thick Cockney accent, “you're me l'ttle, half-wit cooosin.”

“You sound like Eliza Doolittle.”

“Who?”

“Er . . . no one,” Katie shot back. George Bernard Shaw must not have written
Pygmalion
yet.

Toby gave her an odd look. “Whatever you do, Katie lass, don't be smiling with those perfect white teeth of yours. I'd wager there's not a single soul in the whole of Whitechapel that doesn't have crooked teeth.
Or rotting ones
. There's no West End dentists where we're going. So don't be opening that flip-flap of yours—keep it buttoned, or I
will
knock out a few teeth.” Toby chuckled as he smeared muck on her face until it dried like hardened clay. She was supposed to be in disguise as his mute, half-blind cousin.

When they arrived at the slaughterhouse, Toby gave another order. Katie was to wait outside in the hansom cab with Collin while Toby questioned the butcher lads who had seen Mary Ann Nichols's body the night she'd been murdered.

Now, standing in bloody sawdust, Katie wished she'd obeyed, and she was glad of the patch shielding her eye from half of the dangling carcasses.

In the corner, Toby was talking to one of the butcher lads who was hoisting half a joint of beef over his shoulder. The boy was nimble, eager, and athletic-looking with a purple scar running from his nose to his upper lip.

“There's a knack to getting it in the right place on your shoulder, mate,” said the butcher boy, shifting the weight of the carcass. One of the creature's bloody hooves rested on a knot in the rope wrapped around the boy's leather smock, which extended from his neck to his ankles.

“Oy, there! Mind the hook,” another butcher lad shouted as Toby ducked his head below a cow's tail.

“Like I told yer,” said the first butcher lad with the purple scar, “we didn' see nuffin'. Not till Georgie Cross came wailin' down the street hollering fer us to help him wiff some tart he thought stumbled in the street. Shame 'twas Mary Ann Nichols. Billy bend-you-round-his-finger was fair sweet on poor Mary Ann afore she started in wiff Mad-Willy.”

Toby raised an eyebrow. “Billy bend-you-round? So, Mary Ann liked 'em rough, did she?”

“Naw. Billy-bend is soft when it comes to twist 'n' swirls. Got a gentle spot fer the girls, he does. And Mary Ann did 'im a good turn. She introduced Billy-bend to her friend, Dora Fowler, what sells them birds in Clavell Street Market. You know, the girl wiff them big, beaut'ful mince pies? When Dora bats them mince pies at a bloke, he could fair drop dead on the spot.”

“I know Dora Fowler.” Toby nodded. “She was at the inquest.”

Kate inched closer until she was standing just behind Toby's elbow. The two boys were talking with such thick accents, Katie was having trouble following their conversation.

Toby and the butcher lad continued for several more minutes in what sounded like pig Latin, then Toby nodded, waved, and wheeled around, shoving Katie hard between her shoulder blades as if to say “get a move-on.”

Katie stumbled, righted herself, then loped close on Toby's heels, hastening through red-speckled sawdust toward a set of doors leading past a courtyard, and around the corner into the shop front where a butcher-block counter stretched end to end fitted with scales and carving knives. Large joints of meat, similar to those in the slaughter barn, swung from metal hooks behind the counter, but were ticketed at a price per pound. Bluebottle flies circled the glistening meat.

A line of women stood waiting at the counter to buy dinner. Toby pointed out the shop owner, Johnny Brisbane, helping a young woman with a flattened nose at the front of the queue. The woman peered at bits and pieces of hanging meat. After she chose one, Johnny Brisbane slung it to the counter to be weighed, then motioned to one of his butcher boys to cut and whittle it as per his instructions.

Johnny Brisbane turned to the next woman in line. “Here's a loin of pork for one-and-six, Mrs. Bayswater. And I have a nice leg of lamb for the same.”

“I knows yer tricks, Johnny. You can do better than that, you being my niece's cousin's husband. Come on now, Johnny, don't be swindling a near relative.”

“All right, Mrs. Bayswater, you be pullin' my heartstrings. Fourpence off that loin of pork, fivepence off the leg of lamb. Can't do better 'n that, now can I? You'd have me in the poorhouse if I sell off all my meat so cheap.”

A minute later, Toby pulled Johnny Brisbane aside in such a way that didn't allow Katie to listen in.

Shortly after, as they were leaving The Cut, Katie glanced over her shoulder. Brisbane's leather apron was awash with old blood stains as well as bright splatters of new ones. It would be easy, Katie thought, for a butcher lad to cut a girl's throat, then march innocently away from the crime. No one would question his bloody apron.

As the horses began their relaxed trot toward Clavell Street, Toby sat forward in the carriage, arms folded, brows drawn together in a frown.

“You ought not to have been in a slaughterhouse, Katie. It's not a fit place for a proper young lady. We had a deal,” he said quietly.

“I know, I know,” Katie hedged. “A jellied eel. But today I'm a half-blind, mute, twelve-year-old boy,
remember?
” She tugged off the scratchy eye patch and thrust her head out the window to avoid meeting Toby's stony glare.

The windows of the carriage had been left open, and the seats were still slick with morning dew, so when Katie slid across the wet leather, she could feel the damp soak into her threadbare breeches. A quick glance down the road revealed a string of crooked houses where street noises and the smell of Dijon mustard filled the air.

“A right fair jellied eel,” Toby pronounced, and Katie could feel his eyes boring holes into her back.

“The deal,” Collin said, “was that
you
promised to do whatever Toby and I told you, and in return we'd
allow
you to accompany us.”

With great effort Katie resisted the urge to throw back at him that she'd made the deal with Toby and Toby alone.

“All right. All right,” Katie muttered, her elbows dangling out the window as she tried to decide how best to deal with Toby's anger. In Katie's mind, there were only two strategies. The first was to make nice, smile and act contrite; the second, to go on the offensive. But being combative, or even righteously indignant, she felt, was not the way to handle Toby, so she opted for contrition, but not before Collin interjected with a lofty snort:

“You're lucky Toby doesn't wallop you on the spot!” he harrumphed. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “A Twyford would never wallop a girl, of course. And . . . er . . . Toby's half Twyford, don't you know.”

Katie swung her head back into the carriage and looked into Toby's dark eyes, but instead of seeing anger, she saw amusement. They stared at each other for a long moment.

His voice was soft, almost like a caress, when he said, “Collin's right. I would never hit a twist 'n' swirl. Though truth be told, Katie, you near make me want to amend my gentlemanly ways.” He startled her by laughing.

So Toby wasn't mad at her for tagging along after him into the slaughterhouse? His reaction confused her, and she had to tear her gaze from his. Was he taunting her? Mocking her? She stared hard at his chin so she could concentrate. But that only managed to distract her. His chin had a dimple when he smiled, and he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. The dimple was undeniably sexy.

Sexy?
Ugh!
Katie thought.
The last thing I need right now is to be attracted to a guy I
'
ll never see again!
But Katie couldn't ease the image of hooking up with Toby from her mind.
He
'
s technically dead
, she reminded herself.
Or will be when I travel forward in time again.

“Okay,” she announced, with a nonchalant shrug. “I made an itty-bitty mistake in judgment. I thought—since you were questioning a witness—I should be there. That was our deal. I'd help with the investigation.”

Toby smiled.

Katie felt embarrassed but wasn't sure why. She was pretty certain Toby would make her life miserable by making her wear another ridiculous, itchy, uncomfortable disguise, but she forced herself to smile back.

“I'm sorry, Toby,” she said, in a syrupy sweet voice. “But this really has to be a fifty-fifty deal. We need to be partners here. I'm your silent partner today because I'm supposed to be blind and mute, but tomorrow—”

“No tomorrow, Katie. All bets are off. Tomorrow you stay home and knit by the fireside. Or perhaps you can do needlework like a proper English lass.”

“No way! You can't dictate what I can and can't do. We had a deal. You need me.”

“Not any more, pet. You gave us all the information. You said yourself you can't predict the future anymore. Your clairvoyance was a one-shot deal, is how you phrased it.”

“So you're telling me I'm history? I'm toast? All because I didn't listen to your Machiavellian, chauvinistic, insufferable edict to stay put in the carriage? What did you think? I was going to faint dead away when I saw a bloody carcass hanging from the rafters?” She was fuming and wondered what Toby would say if she told him she'd watched dozens of gory autopsies on TV crime shows. “You must be kidding me!” She slammed her fists on the damp seat.

“History? Toast?” Collin sputtered in a wheezy voice. “Whatever do you mean, Katie? No matter how you slice a boiled egg, a noun can't
be
another dissimilar noun. A horse can't
be
a tree. A girl can't
be
history. And as for toast, did you mean burnt toast? Or toast with marmalade? Perhaps you meant a crumpet with jam and butter? That would be an apt metaphor
for a girl!
But in the future, if you're going to bandy about metaphors, I would thank you to—”

“Oh, shut up!” Katie shouted her frustration. “What I meant is you can't just diss me, er, dismiss me. I'm the bones of this operation. I'm the most important spoke in this wheel. You need me if we're going to stop Jack the Ripper!”

Collin tugged on his lower lip. “You distinctly told us that your psychic abilities dried up after your initial vision. You swore to me that you could not tell us who this Jack-the-knife is. I grilled you on that point, and you said—”

“Yes. I mean, no. I don't know who the murderer is, and never will, unless we catch him. That's absolutely correct. But that doesn't mean I won't have good ideas—
better ideas
—than you two. Because I . . . er . . . come at it from a different angle. . . a different historical perspective.”
You don
'
t know how different!
She took a deep breath to calm down.

“Because you're a twist 'n' swirl or a Yank?” Toby asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

No, because I watch CSI. I
'
m from the twenty-first century. I
'
m more logical. More advanced . . . more evolved!