Traitor and the Tunnel (24 page)

She climbed the stairs to Cradle Tower trying to damp down her hopes as far as possible. She’d shammed il ness that morning as the simplest way of avoiding her Palace tasks. It was irresponsible, of course. But nowhere near as reckless as what she was about to propose to this perfect stranger. Once more, Lang didn’t bother to raise his head as the turnkey announced Mary and unlocked the cel . He was stil huddled beneath that stinking blanket – he mightn’t have moved since she’d last seen him – but his shaking was much diminished.

“Mr Lang,” she said quietly, reaching once more into her reticule. She sloshed the bottle gently. This time she’d provided herself with several vials, buying from three different apothecaries in order to avoid suspicion.

As if on a string, he turned to face Mary and extended an expectant hand. She waited for him to down the tincture. Al owed another minute for it to take effect. Then, without permitting herself time to reflect or regret, she began. “I asked you a number of questions yesterday. I should like to begin today by tel ing you about myself.”

Lang blinked at her, only half-focused. Those eyes were sunk deep in his head, whites yel owed, irises brown-black. And yet they were stil her eyes. Today, they were bright with something other than laudanum: fever, thought Mary. It was unsurprising, given his vile surroundings, that untended gash on his right palm. She should have brought something to clean it. It was a detail she’d forgotten. One that would complicate the escape.

“I was born in Limehouse in 1841. My mother was Irish, a seamstress. My father was a Lascar.” He said nothing but his features hardened, settled into determined neutrality. “We were a poor family but a happy one – until the year 1848 or so, when my father sailed on a voyage that was to be his last. His ship was wrecked. He was reported missing, presumed dead. My mother was pregnant at the time, and she miscarried from grief. A year later, she died – this time from poverty.

“Somehow, I survived. I was eventual y taken in by a girls’ school, a charity. I said nothing of my father; concealed my race, for fear they might turn me away.

But last year, I met a man who told me something of my family history. His name was Mr Chen.”

Stil no response from Lang, apart from a careful blankness.

Mary steeled herself to continue, although it was a struggle to keep her voice even. “Mr Chen showed me a cigar box containing documents my father left in his care. These included a letter, in which my father explained that his voyage was more than an ordinary commercial expedition. He described it as

‘a dangerous but necessary’ journey, and he left documents that, I believe, would have explained his reason for going. I was never able to read the documents. They were destroyed in a house fire before I could retrieve them. Mr Chen’s body was found in the burned house.” She paused again.

She’d hoped that news of his old al y’s death would move the man. And yet he failed even to blink. Mary swal owed. Prepared to produce her trump card.

“There was an item that didn’t perish in the fire, however.” She dipped a finger into her col ar and drew out a thread-thin necklace. “The jade pendant you described yesterday. The gourd.” The tiny stone gleamed dul y in the dim light – not that Lang bothered to look at it. His gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance, studiously not seeing his only child there before him. She waited patiently, hoping the dim light was enough to conceal the slight shaking of her hands; the way her pounding heart made her bodice tremble.

And stil he said nothing.

Eventual y, she spoke. It was either that or flee the Tower. “You are my father,” she said, in a voice shaking with unshed tears. “Do you deny that, given the evidence?”

Very slowly, his gaze sharpened and he looked her ful in the eyes. “Yes.”

“You deny it?”

A pause. “I am not your father.”

“And what of this?” Mary snapped the necklace chain and brandished it in his face. “This pendant, which you described so accurately yesterday. It’s proof.”

But it was too late: he was withdrawing again, those weary eyes filming over into selective blindness.

She dropped to her knees, forcing her face into his line of vision. “I even look like you! I have your eye shape, and your mouth, and—” To her shame, her eyes wel ed over. She dashed away the tears with a vicious swipe. “And I’m your only child. You’re my only living relative. Does that mean nothing to you?

“Because it used to. You used to walk me round the streets of Limehouse at dusk, while Mama prepared our tea. You used to tel me I had to grow up brave and strong, and always remember how much you loved me. You used to say that the truth would set me free, and always to tel it.” She was crying now, quietly, dripping tears onto her dress, the ragged bed-linens, Lang’s gnarled hands. “You used to be my hero. And now you’re lying to me in the face of al logic and reason and compassion and everything else you taught me to value.”

She was fumbling in her bag for a handkerchief –

why did she never have a clean handkerchief? –

when he surprised her by speaking. “That man also used to say that character is destiny.”

Mary stared at him. “So you do admit—”

“I admit nothing. But your father said that character was destiny, and with that much I agree.” His eyes were sane, focused, despite their hectic glitter.

“Look at me: a weak, vain man, corrupted and destroyed by opium.”

“But—”

“If I were your father,” said Lang, in tones so gentle that Mary nearly wept afresh, “and I were in this position now, I would never acknowledge you as my daughter.” He caught her look. “Never. Not to cause you pain – certainly not that. But to spare you the shame of having to own such a man as your father.”

Her mind whirled, but only for a moment. “But I want to claim you as my father!” It was difficult not to shout the words but, mindful of the gaoler, Mary spoke with quiet vehemence. “I don’t care what you’ve done, or who you’ve kil ed, or what you’re addicted to. I know the worst there is to know about you, and I stil want to be your daughter!”

He looked at her through half-shut eyes. “No. You are thinking with your heart right now. But once you think with your mind, you wil understand that I’m correct.”

“Damn it!” She pounded the mattress and a puff of brown smoke, acrid and salt-smel ing, flew up into the air and made them both cough. “This is about love and families. I should be thinking with my heart.”

He looked down at her, and her heart staggered a beat. It was such a familiar expression of affectionate reproof, one she’d seen hundreds of times as a child. “Young woman, this is not merely about family bonds. It is also about survival. Your prospects. Your life as a free, educated, respectable lady.” The emphasis he laid on the last word was unmistakable. “You have been torn free of your roots; that was heartbreaking. But it would be a greater tragedy stil to al ow past griefs and the sins of others to destroy your life now.”

Mary closed her eyes, as though doing so would also stop her ears. He spoke sense, of course. Her father always had. And opium fiend or not, murderer or not, he was acting in her worldly best interests.

She pictured him as he had been in his prime –

gentle, handsome, kind – and when she opened her eyes, it was not so excruciatingly difficult to fit together the two Lang Jin Hais. Not now that he’d addressed her so. “What if I want to?” she asked, rising abruptly and beginning to pace the tiny cel .

“What if I want to destroy my social prospects, my English life, this lie I’ve been living?”

Lang was drooping a little, as though the intensity of his effort had actual y bled him. “If. If you chose to sacrifice everything you had to embrace a foreign kil er and opium addict, you would accomplish nothing. I would stil be hanged. The aristocrat would stil be dead.”

“I would be your daughter.”

“And what a bloody taint that would be.”

“What if I chose to embrace it?” She dug in her reticule, found another vial of poison. Of salvation.

He drank greedily enough, but with a new, furtive expression. He was ashamed for her to see him like this, she realized, now that they were talking so very nearly without disguise. “Why stop at social and material suicide? What you propose is tantamount to self-murder.”

Mary knew he intended to shock. He managed it al the same. Only the scrape of the guard’s boots against stone compel ed her to resume a prim, standing posture.

“Ten minutes, miss.”

She nodded, unable to speak, afraid to look at the gaoler lest he see the evidence of tears on her face.

When he left, not without a suspicious look at Lang, she bent low again. “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she said. The interruption had been good for her composure. “I’ve one last question for you. I can help you to escape. I’l organize everything.

I’l make it clean. When I cal for you, wil you come?”

Final y, she had succeeded in shocking him. He sagged back on the cot, hit the wal with a grunt.

Waved off her gesture of concern. “I’m fine. You, however, are mad.”

“It’s been done before, by a priest in Elizabethan times. And there’s a water entrance in this tower: direct access to the Thames. If we chose our time wisely, we could be several miles out of London before anybody noticed.”

“I don’t question your ability to escape yourself.

But look at me.” He sat straighter, holding out his arms, rol ing up his ragged sleeves. He was a mess of bruised skin draped over bones, like gauze over twigs. “Had you forgotten my hand?” He showed her the hideous gash, black and cracked and oozing, with white streaks radiating from its crusted edges.

“I’l never climb down a rope, or even a ladder.”

“I’m not a fool. The most strenuous thing you’l have to do is walk down those stairs and climb into a boat.”

“And then what? We’l sail to Greenwich and live as happy wanderers, picking berries and poaching the odd pheasant?” His impatience was clear, despite his weakness. “You daft, impulsive girl. I’m marked for death, one way or another. It doesn’t matter if I hang at Her Majesty’s pleasure, or die of blood-poisoning from this cut, or if one of the gaolers strangles me in the night. I’l be dead in a fortnight’s time and to hel with the means.”

She hadn’t been quite that stupid: her plan had been to go to ground in Limehouse for a time. She doubted the authorities would be able to identify Lang, one Chinese looking so much like another – to the English, at least. Then, perhaps after that, Bristol or Liverpool – another port town with a smal Asiatic population. But she’d not thought so clearly about Lang’s future. The complications of his fragile health, his addiction, his utter lack of interest in survival.

It cut bone-deep. It was also so familiar. It was how she herself had felt, at the age of twelve, being tried for housebreaking. She’d not had a future, then.

Had seen no reason why her life ought not end then and there. But the women of the Agency had proven her wrong. It had been her first lesson at the Academy.

“If you escape,” she told him, “that fatalism wil be the most dangerous threat to your own life. We’l see a physician about that cut. You can wean yourself from opium. You’re not an old man – forty-five or fifty? If you desire it, you can make yourself anew.”

He simply shook his head.

“What does that mean? You don’t believe me?

You don’t want to?”

“You’re a brave, warm-hearted young lady. Don’t waste it on me.”

So she’d inherited her stubborn streak from her father. Final y, after a long pause, she mustered enough calm to say, “I understand this is a large and dangerous proposal. You may wish to have time to consider it. I shal return tomorrow to tel you the details of my plan.” After al , she’d need until then to work it out in detail and procure the necessary tools.

“I shan’t change my mind, child.”

Child. She blinked back a sudden rush of tears.

“Then you can tel me that again tomorrow. Good-day, Mr Lang.”

Twenty-four

Thursday afternoon

Buckingham Palace

When Mary presented herself for duty, Mrs Shaw examined her with a grim eye. “You don’t look much improved – stil pasty and puffy. Are you sure you’re wel enough? I can’t have you drooping about and fainting in Her Majesty’s presence.”

“I feel much better, thank you, ma’am.”

“Then you may as wel start with the Blue Room.

Be thorough. I doubt the Tranter chit ever was.”

The Blue Room was general y used in the evenings, before and after formal dinners. On occasion, Her Majesty entertained larger groups there in the afternoon but those were special occasions, of which today was not one. Yet as Mary entered, she thought she heard the second set of doors click shut. She stopped. It was a vast hal , a former bal room that had been converted only a few years earlier into a drawing room, and more likely than not she’d heard only an echo. Yet as she moved slowly down its length, she could have sworn she heard steps hurrying away.

She quickened her pace, glancing from side to side as she went. It was ridiculous to think that someone was lurking behind an ornamental screen or beside a fireplace, but she felt suspicious nonetheless. The door at the other side was indeed not quite closed, which probably accounted for the noise she’d heard: a slight draught would have made the door click as though just being shut.