Who cries for the lost, p.8
Who Cries for the Lost, page 8
“Wouldn’t it be safer to visit the Weird Sisters during the day?” said Hero, watching him disorder his stylishly cut hair.
He met her gaze in the mirror. “Perhaps. But I suspect I’ll learn more after dark.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Although you might also be less likely to come back alive.”
Sebastian reached for his walking stick and, with a deft turn of his wrist, drew a small sword from its hidden sheath. “That’s what this is for.”
* * *
Lying just to the north of the theater district of Covent Garden, the area known as St. Giles had its origins in a twelfth-century leper colony dedicated to St. Giles, the patron saint of lepers, outcasts, vagabonds, and cripples. It was an association that haunted the area still. For centuries St. Giles had been the last resort of those driven so low in life that they had no place else to go, particularly refugees from Ireland and France and what were known as “St. Giles blackbirds,” servants from Africa abandoned by their former “masters” and forced to turn to begging to survive. Most constables refused to venture into the area’s dangerous warren of mean alleyways, narrow streets, and dark courts, for those who did rarely came out alive. This was the haunt of pickpockets, housebreakers, and footpads, of murderers and prostitutes and pawnbrokers, a mean, stinking maze of crumbling gin shops and filthy “cadging houses,” where multiple families lived packed into damp cellars, open sewers fouled the streets, and cesspits overflowed.
Pulling his battered old hat low over his eyes, Sebastian took a hackney to Long Acre, slouching in one corner of the aged carriage as he let himself sink into the role he was about to play. By the time he reached his destination, the confident attitude of the lord’s son was gone; his posture and demeanor, his gait, the very way he held his head, were those of a poor man down on his luck. It was a trick he’d learned as a much younger man from a woman he’d once loved, a beautiful actress named Kat Boleyn, and it had served him well in the Army when he’d done the kinds of things gentlemen weren’t supposed to do. Except of course that gentlemen did do them—they simply didn’t talk about it.
He paid off the hackney, then slipped unnoticed through dark, noisome streets crowded with ragged, broken men; desperate, half-naked mothers clutching dying babies; and thin, ragged children with filthy matted hair and hollow-eyed stares. Not far from the ancient Church of St. Giles, the lane he followed emptied into what was known as Seven Dials, a mean circle where seven narrow streets converged to form a star pattern that had long attracted astrologers and alchemists. It was there, at the apex of one of the intersections, that Sibil and her sisters had set up a shop they called Wilde and Weird.
Pushing open the ancient building’s warped, weathered door, Sebastian found himself in the low-ceilinged common room of what must have once been a pub. Now, narrow shelves crowded with dark vials and various other strange and vaguely ominous-looking objects hemmed the room, while pungent bunches of dried herbs and feathers dangled from the smoke-darkened beams overhead. Behind the former pub’s counter stood a small, plump woman of perhaps thirty-five, her brown hair just beginning to fade to gray, her eyes small and dark and watchful. She was dressed in a heavy purple brocade gown from the previous century with ropes of thick, improbable pearls nestled in its lace-edged square neckline, and had one elbow propped on the counter’s worn surface so that she could rest her chin in her palm. “May I help you?” she asked in a bored voice.
“Good evening,” he said, making no attempt to disguise his cultured accent.
She straightened with a jerk as something flared in her eyes, a peculiar combination of avarice and interest mixed with what might have been fear. “Lose your way in the streets, did you, my fine sir?”
“Not exactly.”
“No? So—what? Looking for a love potion, are you?”
He let his gaze drift again around that peculiar collection of objects on display, the skulls of various sizes and species, the strange crystals and waxen images and hideous, primitive-looking masks. Then a soft step and the swish of a curtain brought his gaze back to the counter, where a second woman now joined the first. This one was taller and thinner, with sculpted high cheekbones, unusual green eyes, and soft, sensuous lips touched by a knowing smile. A thin red scar sliced down one side of her cheek and chin to curl around her neck, but she was still strikingly attractive, even beautiful.
“I don’t think it’s love that’s brought Lord Devlin to us, Astrid,” said Sibil Wilde in a husky, ruined voice.
He met the former actress’s gently mocking gaze. “You know who I am, do you?”
“Of course. I’ve been expecting you.” Like her sister, Sibil Wilde wore a gown of the fashion of a different century. Except this was no relic from a secondhand shop but what looked like a finely made red velvet costume from a production of Romeo and Juliet. The front of the thinly padded bodice was styled with a low point and embroidered with gold thread; the wide sleeves were slashed and lined and ornamented with puffs at the shoulders, while the full velvet overskirt was trimmed with gold braid and fell open to reveal a figured silk underdress.
“Of course,” he said, and she laughed.
Still holding his gaze, she took a step back to part the curtain behind her. “Won’t you come this way?”
For a moment he hesitated, and she laughed again. “I won’t murder you, I promise. At least not yet.” Her accent was noticeably different from her sister’s, shaded with a slight burr of the north but nevertheless the voice of a woman of the stage who, whatever her origins, has successfully learned to disguise them.
“And that’s supposed to reassure me?” he said, his fist tightening around his sword stick as he followed her down the short, shadowy corridor to a surprisingly opulent chamber paneled in dark walnut, with an ancient carved sandstone fireplace surround and a particularly fine crystal chandelier overhead that filled the room with a soft flickering light.
“Well, that and the sword hidden in your walking stick.”
He smiled. “Your sister doesn’t sound Scottish. And yet, you do.”
She circled around to the far side of the cloth-covered round table that stood in the center of the room. “We had different mothers—all three of us. My mother was from Edinburgh, while Astrid’s mother was from Wiltshire. You haven’t met Rowena, but her mother was a mulatto from Jamaica.”
She settled in one of the table’s heavily carved high-backed chairs, then gestured toward the chair that faced it. “Please, have a seat.”
“Thank you, but I prefer to stand.”
“As you wish.” She drew a deck of cards from a pocket hidden in her voluminous skirts and cut it neatly. “I know why you’re here.”
“Do you?”
She shuffled the cards together with a neat, practiced flourish. “It’s a peculiar interest for a gentleman of your station—solving murders, I mean. Why do you do it? I wonder. For the intellectual challenge? The excitement of facing danger? Or is it the thrill of solving a puzzle that appeals to you?”
“Nothing so complicated. I simply happen to believe that the victims of murder deserve justice.”
She drew a deep breath that flared her nostrils, and it was as if the scar on her cheek darkened, became more menacing. “Not all dead men deserve justice.”
“Are you suggesting Miles Sedgewick might be one of them?”
She let the cards fly in a professional shuffle, then sent them whirling back again. “I didn’t say that.”
“How did you happen to know him, anyway?”
“He used to come for readings.”
“Of his stars? Or the cards?”
“Both, although he preferred the cards.”
“So what did you see in his cards?”
Her smile firmly back in place, she gave a slight shake of her head. “My readings are like a Papist confessional: I don’t reveal the secrets I learn.”
“Even when the man you told them to is dead?”
“Especially then.”
Sebastian found his gaze drawn to a hollow blue glass ball that hung over the mantel of the room’s empty hearth. It was some six or seven inches in diameter, its lower half filled with a layer of salt strewn with what looked like lavender and marigold buds, bits of moss and cinnamon bark, and chips of amethyst and obsidian.
“It’s called a witch’s ball,” she said, following his gaze. “Have you ever seen one before?”
“Not quite like that.” He paused. “I understand Sedgewick had a particular interest in folklore—especially that involving witches. Do you know why?”
She shrugged. “Why not? It’s fascinating, don’t you think?”
He came to wrap his hands around the carved top of the chair facing her and leaned into it. “Who do you think killed him?”
She stared up at him, meeting his gaze openly. But she was an actress with years of experience, and he could not begin to read her. “I have no idea. Who told you to ask me?”
“A friend.”
“A friend of Sedgewick’s, or of yours?”
“Both.”
She nodded. “McPherson, I assume.” She paused, a slow smile curling her lips when Sebastian said nothing. “He has a very beautiful wife named Isabella; did you know?”
“Yes. I assume that’s supposed to be relevant in some way?”
“You tell me. They say Sedgewick had his face shot off and his sex organs removed. Is it true?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s known.”
“Not by many.”
“Obviously by more than you think.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
For a moment, the room was silent except for the shuffling of the cards. Then she said, “So tell me this: Did you know Sedgewick well?”
“I knew him four years ago.”
She shrugged. “I doubt he’d changed much since that time. Some men grow from the experiences they encounter in life, while others are diminished. Which it is sometimes depends on the character of the man, but not always. Sometimes it’s the nature of the experiences that determines the outcome.”
“And Sedgewick?”
“With Sedgewick, I’d say life didn’t so much change him as . . .” She paused as if searching for the right word. “Accentuate him.”
“In a good or a bad way?”
“I suppose that depends on your perspective.” She set the deck of cards on the surface of the table before her, cut it three times, then looked up at him. “Shall I read for you now?”
He took a step back and dropped his hands to his sides. “No, thank you. Next time, perhaps.”
She reassembled the deck. “Very well. But do be careful leaving here, won’t you? The neighborhood can be . . . dangerous.”
“And yet you choose to live here.” Most of the residents of St. Giles were there because they had no place better to go, but that obviously wasn’t true for the Weird Sisters.
“It adds a certain mystique—an aura of danger that people like.”
“I can see that. Except the danger isn’t simply a part of the mystique; it’s real.”
“Perhaps. But people around here are afraid of us. They leave us alone.”
“Yet the same can’t be said of your customers.”
“Those who can afford it know to take precautions.”
“And the others?”
She shrugged. “I suppose some of them might end up in the Thames with their throats slit.”
“You’re suggesting that might be what happened to Sedgewick?”
“Hardly.” She leaned back in her throne-like chair, a smile touching her lips, the candlelight shimmering on what looked like a very real diamond that dangled from the gold chain around her neck. “When was the last time you knew a footpad to steal a man’s privates?”
“I suppose it depends on what he wanted them for,” said Sebastian, and saw her smile slip.
Chapter 15
Asquall was blowing in from the North Sea, the brine-laden wind slanting a cold rain sideways when Sebastian left the Weird Sisters’ shop to cut across the open expanse of Seven Dials. The storm had driven most of the district’s wretched inhabitants to seek whatever shelter they could find, and as he ducked down the narrow lane of crumbling, soot-stained brick buildings that stretched toward Long Acre, Sebastian found himself swearing softly under his breath.
His hearing and night vision were both unusually acute. But even Sebastian could not see through driving rain, while the howling wind in combination with the roar of water sluicing off the broken gutters overhead would drown out the kinds of sounds that might otherwise warn of danger. He tightened his grip on his walking stick, wishing his leg didn’t feel so damned unreliable but ready to whirl at a sudden rush of footsteps behind him even as he was alive to the potential threat of every man who came toward him.
The day laborer in stained canvas trousers and badly broken shoes.
The butcher with a bloody apron and a long, crooked nose.
The big drover in a torn oilskin and broad-brimmed slouch hat that hid his eyes in a way Sebastian didn’t like.
The man was a giant, looming a good seven or eight inches taller than Sebastian and built broad at the shoulders, with a big, bony skull and a jutting jaw and powerful long legs that carried him quickly through the wind-driven rain. He turned his head away as he came abreast of Sebastian. But then, at the last instant, he careened sideways, slamming into Sebastian hard enough to send him staggering toward the dark mouth of an alley that yawned beside them.
In a searing wave of pain, Sebastian’s weight came down on his bad leg and he felt it crumple beneath him. He landed on one hip, his right hand sinking into the fetid wet mud of the alley as he fought to keep from going sprawling.
Damn, he thought in a surge of impotent rage as he pushed up to his knees. Damn, damn, damn. His fingers slippery with filth, he was fumbling with the catch of his sword stick when the oilskin-wearing giant came up from behind to swoop down and wrap his massive arms around Sebastian’s torso, squeezing the air from his lungs and lifting him bodily off the ground. Fighting for breath, his arms trapped at his sides, Sebastian felt the sword stick slip from his fingers.
“Bon soir, monsieur,” said a faintly mocking voice from the inner depths of the alley. “Having a good evening?”
“Not particularly,” said Sebastian, his feet dangling several inches from the ground as the overgrown oaf swung him around to face the speaker. Unlike his companion, this man was of normal size, with overlong dark hair and a face mostly hidden by the folds of a black cravat. To his knowledge, Sebastian had never seen the man before.
“Don’t struggle, hmm?” said the Frenchman, stepping forward to press the naked blade of a hunting knife flat against Sebastian’s cheek and slide it up until the point hovered just inches from his left eye. “Otherwise, the blade might slip and steal your sight.”
Sebastian went perfectly still. For one suspended moment, the only sounds in the alley were the drumming of the rain and the heavy breathing of the three men. Then the Frenchman said, “You picked a bad night to take a stroll through an unfamiliar neighborhood, monsieur le vicomte.”
“So it would seem,” said Sebastian.
A hint of amusement narrowed the Frenchman’s eyes. “I have some advice for you, monsieur: Give up this investigation, now, or you will pay a price most dear. You do understand, yes?”
Sebastian blinked at the rain that ran down his face and into his eyes. At some point, he realized, he’d lost his hat. “Not entirely. What precisely are you threatening me with?”
“Use your imagination. Think of all that you hold dear, all that you could not bear to lose.”
“You bloody bastard,” swore Sebastian on a harsh exhalation of air. “Who sent you?”
The man laughed.
Clenching his jaw, Sebastian arched back against the giant’s massive torso, jerking his head away from the knife at the same time as he swung up both knees and kicked out to drive the heels of his boots into the Frenchman’s gut.
The Frenchman stumbled back, his breath leaving his body in a whoosh as the overgrown oaf, thrown off-balance, staggered, momentarily loosening his grip on Sebastian.
Twisting to one side, Sebastian broke the oaf’s hold and threw himself toward the mouth of the alley, landing in a roll. Snatching his walking stick from the muck, he brought the sharp double-bladed sword hissing from its sheath as he surged to his feet.
“Non,” said the Frenchman to his overgrown companion, reaching out to catch the man’s arm when he would have surged forward.
The oaf drew up, his big hands dangling at his sides, his nostrils flaring and his jaw set hard.
“Non,” said the Frenchman again, swiping one crooked elbow across his wet forehead. “Our message has been delivered.” To Sebastian, he said, “Be wise, monsieur, and remember: all that you hold most dear.”
The two men backed away from him down the alley, the Frenchman watching him carefully, the knife still in his hand.
Sebastian stayed where he was. His wounded leg on fire, the sword stick still gripped in one hand, he leaned back against the alley’s soot-stained brick wall and felt the rain course down his bare face as he drew a long, shuddering breath.
* * *
“Calhoun might be a genius of a valet,” said Hero, eyeing Sebastian’s muck-smeared hat, “but I doubt even he will be able to salvage this.”
Sebastian sank deeper into the water of the steaming bathtub set up before the fire in his dressing room. “You never know. The muck might help me to blend in better the next time I need to visit St. Giles.”
She made an incoherent noise deep in her throat and tossed the hat atop the pile of filthy clothes near the door. “You’re lucky Jeeper the wherryman isn’t at this very moment fishing you out of the Thames—minus a few strategic body parts.”
