The Aylesford Skull (39 page)

Eddie nodded.

“Then be ready to run. If they catch me, don’t wait. You keep running. When you’re outdoors, take to the trees and hide.” He gripped Eddie’s hand, said, “Now,” and swung the door open, starting forward even as he saw that someone blocked the way – George, alone, his finger to his lips, his head shaking.

“As you value your life, do as I tell you,” George said, his voice low. Finn nodded, and George said to him, “Follow me, then. You’re leaving Shade House for good and all, and quickly. If we meet someone, you’re my prisoner, do you see? Play your part, boy.”

They descended the stairs at the end of the hall, sounds of loud talk and laughter below. Finn was happy to play his part, whatever it meant. He had been right about George, he thought, and he and Eddie were in luck that it was George sent to fetch them. There was no earthly reason for him to be playing them false. At the second floor he led them hurriedly down the hall, the noise from below diminishing. He swung open a door, closing it behind them, Finn still gripping Eddie’s hand as they followed him readily across a broad room where there stood several tables and empty kegs. An open fireplace lay along one wall, big enough to walk a horse into. They passed into another room, this one with an oven, a coal scuttle alongside, an open arch behind, which led to a stairway where a dirty window of bullseye glass looked down at the millwheel.

They followed the stairs downward, Finn hearing what sounded like the rattling of a doorknob from somewhere above. George glanced back, evidently having heard it himself. At the base of the stairs stood two more doors, one of which George opened, hauling them through before barring it with a long timber, desperately quiet and cautious about it. He put his finger to his lips again, and tiptoed deeper into the room, where the three of them stood still, Eddie glancing at Finn, who winked at him and nodded.

After a moment of silence, someone tried the door, turning the knob, the door opening a quarter inch before jamming against the timber. The door shook heartily now. There was another silence – someone listening, perhaps – and then the receding footsteps of the person ascending the stairs. George let out a breath and nodded, and Finn felt a sense of relief for the first time that morning. Apparently they were in some sort of storeroom, given the sacks and crates haphazardly stacked on the flagstone floor. It came to him that they must be very near the kitchen, and indeed there was another low door. Perhaps McFee himself was in the room beyond.

“You’re meant for the stage, boy,” George said in a quiet voice, “with that tale of your poor brother dying of the bloody jack and you making cheeses. You’ll do well in the world, if you don’t find yourself murdered first. It was you in Spitalfields, wearing the balaclava, wasn’t it, coming after the boy alone? I recalled the green of your coat when I saw it in the daylight.”

“Yes, sir,” Finn said. “That was me.”

“You’re main anxious to save the boy. Why? Perhaps he’s kin?” He looked from one to the other of them.

“No, sir, nothing like that. I could have stopped him being taken by the Doctor in the first place, but I didn’t do it. I’m trying to put it right.”

George nodded. “I thought maybe you had scruples.”

“What of you, sir?” Finn asked boldly. “You’re in a right mess now.”

“Not if they don’t know it’s me that’s helped you. I’ll think of something.”

He glanced back at the door, and it seemed to Finn that the contrary was true. It had been George that Narbondo sent to fetch them. They would know it was George who helped them escape.

“You listen to what I tell you,” George said. “There’s tunnels beneath this inn. I’ll show you to them, but you’ll have to find your way through. This here’s a bag with candles and matches. I keep it at the ready.” He held out a leathern bag, and Finn took it. “If there’s water running along the floor of the tunnel, follow it. You’ll be descending, north toward the river. There’ll come a time when there’s a passage that leads up again, a dry passage. If you follow to the left, always to the left, mind, you’ll come out near the bay. Take to the wood or whatever cover you can find, and make your way topside to the river. Do you ken what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Finn said. “Water flows downward while we’re getting clear, not when we’re getting out, which is always to the left.”

“That’s it. If you take the wrong turning, then you might come out anywhere, so you follow a handy trail till you find yourself somewhere and know where you are. Do you have money?”

“In my shoe,” Finn said.

“Good lad. Now, if it goes bad, and they catch you, you haven’t seen old George and you don’t know me. It was you who took the food and the candles out of the kitchen when McFee wasn’t watching. Do you hear? It was you who barred the door, you who found your way to the tunnel. If they knew I was soft, they’d do for me. There’ll be a hue and cry, and I’ll be coming for you along with the rest. I doubt I can save you then without copping it.”

“Yes, sir, and thank you, sir. We’re grateful.”

“Don’t be grateful yet. You aren’t clear of this place. Come.”

He opened a door onto an empty closet – a strange thing in a storeroom. The entire floor, however, was cleverly hinged, which was evident only when George lifted it back. He nodded Eddie and Finn in before him, where a set of stairs led downward into the darkness. It came to Finn that everything had turned around on the instant. There had been no hope for escape from the room upstairs, and now the empty darkness before them was full of promise. The business of the tunnels was a mystery, but then everything in the world was a mystery until the mysteries were understood. A lucifer match and a candle would show them the way.

They found themselves in a dark, circular excavation now, roofed with timbers, a tiny stream flowing away downwards in the center of the dirty chalk floor, water seeping through the timbers above. The only light came from the open trap above them; the tunnel leading away was black and cool.

“Bon voyage, as the Frenchman would say. Light your candle.” George tipped his hat, ascended the stairs, waited till the candle was lit, and then lowered the trap.

Finn took Eddie’s hand and set out, hearing almost at once a scuffling noise above and behind them. He stopped and turned, supposing that George was coming back down through the trap, but no light appeared, and all was abruptly silent. They turned again into the tunnel and hurried onward, the candle throwing a very small circle of light around their feet and illuminating the flowing water, just as George had told them. It was dank, the air close and fetid, and the candle guttered, although there was no evident breeze. Eddie pressed close to Finn, but the boy was game enough. Finn considered the distance to the bay – not far, given what he’d seen from the coach earlier. But as soon as it entered his mind to be hopeful, a disembodied voice spoke out of the darkness somewhere in front of them.

“Hello, chicklets,” it said. “Stop a moment.”

The speaker opened the door of a dark-lantern. Finn looked at him in horror: the Crumpet, oily and grinning, dressed in the swank clothes that he had been wearing last night in the rookery, a blue waistcoat and black-and-white shoes with narrow toes. Chalk discolored the polished leather of his shoes. He wasn’t much taller than Finn, now, but he was no less demonic than he had been that night under the bridge. He stood beaming at them, as if he were both pleased and surprised.

“Well, well, here we are,” he said, winking at Finn. “Dame Fortune has smiled upon us, putting us in each other’s company once again.” His smile disappeared then, and he said, “Don’t give it another thought, dearie, if it’s your knife you’re contemplating. I have one of my own, you see.” He drew a long, narrow blade from under his coat. “Imagine my surprise when you cut me, boy, my guts pouring out through my belly. Before the sun sets today, we’ll see what your own innards are made of; you have my word on it. The Doctor has promised you to me. The squeaker, however, is required upstairs, where his head is to be turned into a table ornament.”

Finn flung the candle into the Crumpet’s face and then turned and ran, hauling Eddie bodily along through the darkness, back toward the inn, splashing through the water, dragging his free hand along the wall and trying to calculate how far they had to run before slamming into the unseen stairway. It was close ahead, for certain. If the trap weren’t locked...

“Help!” he shouted. “Christ! Help!” Hoping against all odds that George might still be somewhere above and hear the cries.

And then they were there, and light appeared above, to his great relief, broadening as the trap was swung open. But it wasn’t George who peered down at them and then descended the stairs. It was the dwarf from the rookery. He held a twin of the Crumpet’s knife in his hand, the blade bloody brown and dripping in the half-light. They were trapped, fore and aft and walled in by the chalk walls on either side. Finn thought of his oyster knife, but skewering the Crumpet last time had been a matter of surprise as well as skill. There would be no surprising anyone now, and there was Eddie to think of.

“What of our good friend George, Sneed? Will he join us?” the Crumpet asked the dwarf.

“He run off.”

“Then whose blood, I might ask, did you spill? Your dirk is awash with it.”

“
George
, you mortal idiot. An awkward bastard, George, but I done him.”

“You
done
him, Sneed? Do you mean you cut him, but you didn’t
kill
him?”

“That’s right, you bleeding sod,” said the dwarf. “Under his rib, I cut him. Deep. He’s bleeding like a hog to slaughter. He won’t get far. McFee’s after him.”

The Crumpet nodded theatrically. “Very well. We’ve come to the bottom of it. Do you see what comes of what they call compassion?” he asked Finn, reaching forward and snatching the bag out of his hand. “A knife between the ribs. It’s a difficult lesson, surely. I learned a similar lesson at your own hand – oh, yes, I remember it well. And many’s the night I lay awake featuring how I’d teach it to you, turn and turn about, if I was lucky. And now here we are talking away like old friends, my luck come in at last. I’ll be a mortally thorough teacher, young scamp. I promise you that. You’ll sing before I’m through with the lesson.”

He turned and set out back down the tunnel, and the dwarf pushed Finn, holding the knife up in his face as a warning. Finn thought unhappily of George, and the kindness that he’d done them. Kindness had meant the end of him. He held tightly to Eddie’s hand, walking two steps behind the Crumpet. His oyster knife lay in its sheath in his coat pocket, and he had the urge to touch it, to make sure it was there, but he didn’t dare. Instead he pictured how he would reach for it when the time came, unsheathe it, and strike with the curved blade, playing it over in his mind so that he would get it quick and right.

Last time, under London Bridge, there had been darkness, a ray of moonlight to see by. He had heard the Crumpet coming for him and was ready, a cold, black anger commanding his mind, drowning the fear. Afterward, when he was running, he knew what had happened only by the blood on his hand and clothing and the sharp intake of breath in the instant that the Crumpet had clutched his stomach and fallen. Finn had left the vision behind him when he left London for Kent, and the thought of poisoning his life and his dreams again sickened him. Even so, he had now become Eddie’s keeper, to use the old phrase, and there was no turning your own cheek when it was your neighbor who was struck, or so his mother had taught him. If it was in him to do it, he would send the Crumpet to Hell.

They soon arrived at a door set into the wall of the tunnel, the chalk cut out to admit a timber frame and a long, heavy lintel overhead. The door stood open an inch, showing a line of light. The Crumpet pushed it open and gestured Finn and Eddie through, into the basement of Narbondo’s cottage, the Crumpet standing behind him, the Crumpet’s hand clamped onto Finn’s arm. Narbondo stood before the wall full of surgical tools, regarding Finn curiously as soon as he appeared, and then smiling when he looked at Eddie. His two guests – Lord Moorgate and the woman, she wearing her veil again – stood nearby, Moorgate looking imperious, but the woman a mere mystery behind the veil.

“What of George?” Narbondo asked the dwarf.

“Don’t you worry about George...” the dwarf started to say, holding up the bloody knife.

“Dead,” the Crumpet said, “or as good as. McFee’s seeing to him.”

Narbondo shook his head. “Terrible shame,” he said. “The man showed such promise, but he had a sentimental streak that he couldn’t hide. Strap young Edward to the table, Sneed,” he said to the dwarf, who slipped his knife into a scabbard attached to his ankle. “We’ll catch his shrieks in Lord Moorgate’s silk topper.”

Finn looked around, calculating but seeing nothing – no way out, but aware in his mind of the sand flowing through the hourglass. There lay the door, fifteen feet away, and sunlight through the bars of the window, the wood beyond. But the door was shut, the window barred. Sneed hauled Eddie to the block, terror in the boy’s eyes, and lifted him bodily, heaving him atop it. Finn heard Eddie speaking now, in a voice that was unnaturally normal. “Finn,” he said, very low at first. And then louder: “Finn!”

“I’m here, Eddie,” he said, hearing the uselessness in his words. “Your father’s coming, Eddie, along with the others. Hold on!” Finn’s mind was sharpened by his hatred of the evil in this room, by the things that had been done here, that had left their poison in the stones of the floor. No one was coming. It was just him and Eddie.

He felt the Crumpet’s grip relax, and heard a high, barely discernible liquid mumbling coming from the man’s mouth, which was near Finn’s ear – strange endearments, pet names, a soft trilling sound that was an abomination. The Crumpet was standing very close behind, his hot breath on Finn’s neck, and Finn felt saliva drip under his shirt collar. Once again he considered the knife in his pocket, wishing now that it had a longer blade. Eddie was incapable of helping himself. The boy could have no idea what fate awaited him, which was a small comfort, at least for the moment.