A Christmas Odyssey

That evening they began to descend even deeper into the world of addiction and despair. The broad streets of the West End of London were glittering bright on the surface. They walked along Regent Street and into the Haymarket, passing theaters of the utmost sophistication. Bessie lagged behind, staring at the notices, the lights, the fashions. Several times Squeaky had to yank at her hand to drag her along.

The lamps were lit, and the gleam off of them caught the pale drifts of snow, touching it with warmth.

“Come on!” Squeaky said sharply, but Bessie was watching the carriages clattering up and down the center of the street, or swiveling around to look at people walking arm in arm, men with greatcoats on, women in capes trimmed with fur.

They turned off Piccadilly into an alley, and within twenty yards there were fewer lights, and in the shadowed doorways prostitutes plied their trade, ignoring those huddled within feet of them, half asleep, sheltering from the icy wind and the sleet.

Crow led the way down the steps from the pavement into a cellar, and through that into a deeper cellar. He began asking questions, discreetly at first, full of inventive lies.

“Looking for my sister,” he explained, then described Sadie as well as he could, from other people’s words.

A gaunt-eyed drunkard stared at him vacantly. “Don’t know, old boy. Won’t care,” he drawled. “Got anything fit to drink?”

Crow passed by him, and Squeaky, still holding Bessie by the hand, spoke to a fat man with a face raddled and pockmarked with old disease.

“Lookin’ fer a man who owes me money,” he said grimly, then described Lucien. “I don’t sell my women for nothing.”

But the answer he received was equally useless.

They wasted little more time there before going out the back into a half-enclosed courtyard, then down more steps into a subterranean passage leading toward the river. Here there were more rooms indulging darker tastes. Even Bessie seemed disturbed. Squeaky could feel her fingers digging into his flesh, gripping him as if he were her lifeline.

Henry said nothing, perhaps too appalled to find words. They saw men and women, and those who might have been either, in obscene costumes, practicing torture and humiliation that belonged in nightmares.

Bessie shivered and leaned her head against Squeaky’s shoulder.

Patiently Squeaky described Sadie and was greeted with raucous laughter from a man with hectic energy as if fueled by cocaine. His limbs twitched, and he seemed to find it difficult to contain his impatience.

“You too?” the man said, then laughed again.

“Someone else looking for her?” Squeaky said immediately.

“Yes! Oh yes! The long black hair, the beautiful eyes. Sadie—Sadie!”

“Who?” Squeaky urged.

Suddenly the man stood still, then he started to shiver.

“Who?” Squeaky lowered his voice. “Tell me, or I’ll slit yer throat!”

Henry drew in his breath to protest, then changed his mind.

“Shadwell,” the man replied very softly. Then he swiveled around, pushed his way between two men sharing a bottle, and disappeared.

Squeaky looked around at the vacant stares of the opium and laudanum addicts, the rambling half conversations of the drunkards, and gave up. He jerked his hand to direct them onward, and gripped Bessie more tightly as they followed a short, heavy man out into the alley.

Squeaky saw these people now with deepening disgust precisely because he had seen them all before. He had just forgotten the sheer and useless misery. Suddenly respectability, whether it dulled your wits or not, had a sweetness nothing else could match. It was like drinking clean water, breathing clean air.

Standing here in this filthy alley, he wanted to turn and run, escape before it caught hold of him again, or before he woke up and realized that everything he had now was just a dream. Hester Monk would despise him if she ever saw this. The thought of that made the sweat break out on his body in a way no physical fear ever had.

He hurried on, asking questions discreetly, in roundabout fashion, as if looking for pleasure himself.

It was obvious that Henry Rathbone found it repugnant to see people’s misunderstanding as to his intent, but he offered no explanation. The distaste, the embarrassment lay in his eyes and the faint pulling of his mouth, almost impossible to read in the garish light of gaslamps. Squeaky saw it only because he knew it was there.

They did not mention Lucien’s name, only his description, and regrettably there were many young men of excellent family and considerable means, even in the most depraved places, where any kind of sexual pleasure was for sale, the more bizarre the more expensive.

In one wide tunnel close to the river, laughter echoing along its length, magnified again and again, water dripping down the walls, Henry mentioned Shadwell again, as if it were half a joke. It was met with sudden silence. The blood drained from the skin of the man they were talking to, or perhaps it was a woman. In the flickering light and under the paint it was hard to tell. His naked shoulders were pearly white, blemishless, and without muscles, but his forearms were masked by long pink gloves, up to the elbow. Crow had seen such things before, but Henry was clearly uncomfortable. Still, he refused to let anything stop him in his quest.

“If you would be good enough,” Henry persisted.

The man—or woman—froze. There was music playing somewhere, strident and off-key.

“You heard wrong,” he said. His voice shook. “Someone’s playin’ you for a fool. I have to go.” And with a surprisingly hard shove, he knocked Henry off balance so that Squeaky only just prevented him from falling.

Crow seized the man by the arm. “No names, just which way?” he demanded.

But it was no use. The fear of Shadwell was greater than anything Crow or Squeaky could call up.

They heard word of Lucien in several places, or at least of someone who might have been him. On the other hand, such a person might have been anyone, even Niccolo, Sadie’s other lover.

“Why yer wanna know?” a short, monstrously fat man demanded, waddling around the bench in a brothel entrance to stare at them. His face was red, with a bulbous nose, crazed over its surface with broken veins. His flesh wobbled as he moved, and Bessie backed away from him, pushing herself hard against Squeaky’s side.

The fat man looked her up and down, his eyes almost level with her throat. He lowered his gaze to her chest. “What d’yer want for ’er? There’s some as like skinny bints, like they was children.”

“She’s not for sale,” Henry snapped. “Touch her, and Mr. Robinson will break your fingers.” He said it with perfect seriousness.

Squeaky drew in his breath to protest vigorously, then realized that perhaps if the man did touch Bessie, he would indeed be delighted to do something like that, or something even more personal.

The fat man stepped back, his eyes hot, his large hands clenched. Then, moving with surprising speed, he darted behind his bench again. His other hand plunged into the space between it and the wall, and came out brandishing the long, thin blade of a sword. The light glittered on its polished steel. It made a whiplike sound as he sliced it through the air.

Henry had nowhere to retreat; he was already against the wall. The little color in his face drained away as he realized his situation. Crow moved away, to distract the fat man’s attention, but it was Squeaky who seized the hat stand by the door. Swinging it round like a long staff, he cracked it over the fat man’s head, who crashed down, blood pouring from his scalp.

Henry stared at the widening pool in horror.

Squeaky dropped the stand and grabbed Henry by the arm, leaving Bessie to follow. “Come on!” he ordered. “Out of here!”

“But he’s injured!” Henry protested. “Shouldn’t we …”

Squeaky swore at him. Ignoring his protest, he half-pulled him off his feet, dragging him to the door and out into the alleyway. It was pitch-dark and he had no idea where they were going. It was important to simply get away from the brothel and the fat man bleeding on the floor.

They walked rapidly, crowding each other in the dark, ice-slicked alley, tripping over debris, and hearing rats scuttle away. They kept moving until they had gone at least a quarter of a mile, then finally stopped in an empty doorway sheltered from the wind, and well out of the light of the solitary street lamp.

“Thank you,” Henry said quietly. “I’m afraid I was taken by surprise. A foolish thing to have allowed. I apologize.”

“It’s nothing.” Squeaky spoke casually, but a sudden warmth welled up inside him. He was ridiculously, stupidly pleased with Henry’s gratitude. For a moment he felt like a knight in shining armor.

They continued their pursuit. The winter day and the bitter cold of night were almost indistinguishable in the cellars and passages between one smoky, raucous room and another.

After half a dozen abortive leads as to where Niccolo and Sadie might be, they came to a small abandoned theater. A score of people lay on the floor half asleep. Some gave at least the impression of being together, clinging to each other’s body warmth. One man lay alone, huddled over in pain, his arms wrapped around himself defensively. His dark hair was matted, but still thick.

Crow picked his way across the floor and bent down beside him. Squeaky saw, from where he stood a dozen feet away, that the sleeping man’s face was gaunt, but still handsome in the dark, sensitive way Niccolo had been described to them.

Crow shook his shoulder. “Niccolo?” he said sharply.

The man stirred.

“Niccolo?” Crow shook him harder and the man pulled away with a gasp of pain.

Bessie started forward from Squeaky’s side. “It in’t Niccolo, that’s Lucien!” she said urgently. “ ’E’s ’urt.” She clambered over the bodies, some cursing her, and bent down beside Crow. “Yer gotta do summink,” she demanded. “ ’Ere! Lucien! It’s me, Bessie. We come to ’elp yer.”

Lucien stirred and half sat up, grunting with the effort, holding his left arm to his side. “Who the hell are you?” His speech was slurred but it still held the remnants of his origins, the home and the privilege to which he had been born.

The eagerness died out of Bessie’s face. “Don’t yer remember me?”

Lucien groaned.

“Of course he does,” Crow said with sudden anger. “He’s just half asleep, and he’s hurt.”

“Yer gonna ’elp ’im,” she urged Crow.

Without answering, Crow pulled the coat Lucien was wearing away from him and looked at the wound. His shirt was matted with blood on the right side of his chest.

Lucien winced and swore. “Leave me alone!” he said with a burst of real fury. “Get out.”

Henry stepped over a couple of sleeping figures and went to Crow and Lucien. He reached down and took Lucien’s arm. “Stand up,” he ordered. “Before we can help you, we need to get somewhere clean, where we can see what we’re doing.”

“I don’t want your bloody help!” Lucien snapped. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

“My name is Henry Rathbone. Stand up.”

Something in the authority of his tone made Lucien obey, but sullenly.

Squeaky also stepped forward. He could see other people beginning to stir. A lone figure in the farthest archway was standing upright, one arm bent a little as if holding something, perhaps a weapon.

“We got ter get out of here,” he said tersely to Henry and Crow. “You bring him.” He gestured toward Lucien. “Give him a clip around the ear if he makes a fuss.” He snatched Bessie’s hand and almost pulled her off her feet. “C’mon.”

They could not go far. Lucien was weak, and they had no idea how deep his wound was or how long ago he had sustained it. It was bitterly cold outside, and a steady, hard sleet was turning back to a soaking rain. Here in the passages and alleys so narrow that the eaves met overhead, the pall of smoke in the air was made worse by the fog blowing up from the river, so even at midday the light was thin and pale.

“We need to find somewhere to look at this,” Crow said grimly. “And something to eat,” he added.

They searched for more than an hour, asking for a room, space, anything private. All the time Crow and Bessie supported Lucien, who was rapidly growing weaker, and stumbling every few yards.

At last they found a back room in a pub. After a good deal of hard bargaining, threats from Squeaky, and money from Henry, they were shown to one small, dirty room with candles and a wood-burning stove, for which fuel was extra. Squeaky went to buy food and to find the nearest well to fill a bucket of water. Bessie swept the floor after very neatly stealing a neighbor’s broom. She returned it with a charming smile, saying she had found it in the alleyway.

Crow and Henry did what they could to help Lucien. Crow, who still had his Gladstone bag with him, took out a length of clean bandage and a small bottle of spirit.

“This is going to hurt,” he told Lucien. “But it’ll hurt a hell of a lot more if you get gangrene in it. That could kill you.”

Lucien glared at him. “What the hell do you care? Who are you, anyway? Who are any of you?”

“I’m a doctor,” Crow replied, measuring the spirit out into a small cup.

“I’m not drinking that,” Lucien told him.

“You’re not being offered it,” Crow replied. “It’s to clean your wound. It’ll sting like fire.” Without hesitating he jerked Lucien’s protective arm away from the wound and placed an alcohol-soaked bandage on it.

Lucien screamed. His voice choked off as he gagged and gasped for breath.

Bessie stared at Crow. Her face was ashen, but she said nothing.

Henry felt sick. He could barely imagine the pain. He looked at the wreck of a man lying on a pile of rags on the floor, the messy knife wound in his side now exposed, and he remembered the youth he had known a dozen years ago.

Crow’s dark face was tense, his concentration on the tools of his art: the scalpel, the forceps, the needle and thread. He was an extraordinary young man, not much more than Lucien’s age. Henry realized that he had spent the last four or five days in Crow’s company, and yet he knew almost nothing about him. He did not even know his full name, much less where he came from, who his family were, or even where he lived.

He watched now as Crow bent to clean and stitch the gash in Lucien’s side. His hands were lean and strong: beautiful hands. And his face was unusual: too mercurial to be handsome, too many teeth—that enormous smile. He was also skilled. Henry wondered why he had not qualified as a doctor, but it would be grossly insensitive to ask, inexcusably so. He maintained his silence, simply handing him the instruments as he was asked for them.

It took a little while, and when Crow was finally satisfied, Lucien lay back on the rags, exhausted. “Thank you,” he said with a gasp.

“What happened?” Crow asked.

“Someone stuck me with a knife,” Lucien replied. “What the hell does it look like?” He was still speaking between gritted teeth.

“It looks like you were caught in a fight,” Crow told him. “What happened to the person who stabbed you?”

“Why?” There was a faint flicker of a smile. “You want to go bandage him too?”

Crow ignored the question. “Are you injured anywhere else? Is there anything more I can do?”

“No.” Lucien hesitated. “Thank you.”

Crow put his instruments away and closed his bag. “I rather thought the other person might be dead—was it a man or a woman? Or one of each? Which was how they managed to strike back at you.”

Lucien stared at him, moving a little so he faced him, his eyes wide, his face fallen slack with amazement.

Crow waited, looking expectantly for an answer.

Slowly Lucien lay back, relaxing against the rags with a wince as his muscles pulled against the bandage.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said wearily. “It was a stupid fight over cocaine. Some idiot thought I had his and he attacked me.”

“And did you?” Crow raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t even use the damn stuff! I like opium … now and then.” His eyes looked somewhere far away. “I’m drunk on life, on laughter and passion, on dreams of the impossible, on Sadie, and something that seems like love, or at least seems like not being alone.” His voice dropped. “How in hell would you know what I’m talking about.” It was a dismissal, not a question.

“No idea,” Crow replied, his sarcasm barely discernible. “The rich are the only ones who have any idea what loneliness is, or loss, or the sense of having failed. The rest of us are too busy with hunger, cold, and disease, and finding somewhere to sleep for the night—or at least to lie down.”

Lucien stared at him, and Crow stared straight back. Very gradually something in Lucien changed.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “That was stupid. I despise self-pity. Most of all in myself.”

Crow gave him one of his dazzling smiles. “So do I,” he agreed.

Squeaky returned with food and water. Bessie portioned it out and carefully fed Lucien his share before eating her own.

When they were finished Henry turned to Lucien. “I came at your father’s request,” he stated simply. “He wants me to ask you to come home, but before that is possible, we need to clear up the matter of the murder of Sadie, or Niccolo.”

Outside the wind was rising, rattling the windows.

Lucien gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Clear it up! You mean explain it? Somehow make it all right?” His mouth twisted with contempt. “You’re an idiot. Go back and tell my father you couldn’t find me. It’s true enough. You have no idea who I am now, or what happened to the Lucien Wentworth you thought you knew.”

“I intend to find out,” Henry replied.

Lucien turned away. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Don’t be so incredibly arrogant,” Henry said sharply. “Do you think you are the first young man to indulge himself and throw away the life he was given? To tell other people that they wouldn’t understand is to give yourself a uniqueness you don’t possess. You are desperately and squalidly ordinary. The only thing different about you is that you had more to throw away than most of us.”

Now Lucien was angry. “And what the hell would you know about it? You comfortable, complacent, self-satisfied …” He trailed off.

“Self-pity again?” Henry inquired.

“Self-disgust,” Lucien replied quietly. “Go back and tell my father that you couldn’t find me. It’s not a lie. You couldn’t find the son he wants back. That man died a year ago.”

“Who killed him? You? Or Sadie?”

Lucien gave an abrupt laugh. “Very good. I did. Sadie only helped.”

“Where did you meet her?” Henry asked.

“At the theater, with friends. She came to the party afterward.” He smiled briefly and for a moment he was lost in another time. “God, she was beautiful! She made every other woman in the room seem half-alive, leaden creatures without color, as if they lived in the shadows.”

“Like Shadwell,” Henry remarked.

Lucien’s eyes widened. “Don’t even whisper his name,” he said very quietly. “There was nothing of that in Sadie then. She was just … so alive. It was as if she could see the magic in everything. And she liked me. You think that’s my delusion, my vanity? It isn’t. There were loads of other men there with titles, and more money than I’ll ever have.”

Henry said nothing.

“She liked me,” Lucien repeated, but his voice wavered a little this time, the certainty gone.

“Of course,” Henry agreed. “And it is very pleasant to be liked.”

For an instant there was a devastating loneliness in Lucien’s face, then anger. “She didn’t ask for anything,” he said sharply. “Never money. She was more fun than any other woman I’ve known. She knew how to dress, how to dance, how to be funny and wise and more original than anyone else. She made the rest of them look like cows! Half asleep most of the time. Never saying anything except placid agreement, whatever they think you want them to say. I wouldn’t be surprised to see most of them chewing the cud!”

“And she found you equally interesting,” Henry observed, a slightly dry amusement in his voice. “That must have been most agreeable for you.”

“It was,” Lucien snapped. Then suddenly he seemed to crumple, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

Crow looked across at Henry, frowning a little.

“Where is Sadie now?” Henry asked. “Is she the one who was murdered, or was it Niccolo?”

“I don’t know. I think it was Niccolo,” Lucien replied.

“If you don’t know, that means you haven’t seen either of them.”

“Yes,” Lucien agreed hoarsely. “I don’t know!”

Henry allowed his gaze to wander around the cold room again, with its dark walls, its filthy windows now rattling in the wind.

“Your father would welcome you home,” he said, looking at Lucien again.

The color burned up Lucien’s face. “I can’t come,” he said very quietly, avoiding Henry’s eyes.

“Why not?” Henry asked.

“Shadwell—Shadow Man,” Lucien replied. “I … I do things for him. I owe him.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Squeaky put another piece of wood in the stove. They’d be lucky if it lasted the night. Outside the rain was running down the gutters and dropping from the eaves. Bessie sat next to Squeaky, close to him for warmth.

“Did you kill Sadie?” Henry asked Lucien.

Lucien’s eyes opened wide. “No!”

“Or Niccolo?”

“No! I can’t think of any reason you should believe me, but I haven’t killed anyone, at least … at least not directly. God knows what I’ve caused indirectly. Poor Sadie. It was a hell of a mess.” His face pinched with remembered pain, and his eyes seemed to see the memory as if it were more real than Henry himself, or Crow sitting on the floor a few feet away.

“But you saw it?” Henry challenged.

“Only the blood,” Lucien replied.

“What is it you do for Shadwell?” Henry asked.

“Bring people here—young ones with money.”

Lucien started to shudder. His body seemed to slip out of his control, and his teeth rattled.

Henry took off his coat and wrapped it around Lucien, folding it over his thin body with gentleness. Then he sat back on the ground again, looking oddly vulnerable in his shirtsleeves.

Bessie looked at him anxiously, but Squeaky put out his hand to stop her from interrupting.

If Henry was cold, he gave no sign of it.

“Bring people here to indulge their tastes, and then they find that they are addicted, and have to come back again and again? And if they become troublesome, who deals with them then?”

“I don’t know,” Lucien stammered through his teeth.“Shadwell himself, maybe.”

“Was Sadie troublesome? Was she no longer doing what he wanted of her?” Henry persisted.

Lucien stared at him. Then he closed his eyes and turned away. “She always did what he wanted. She couldn’t afford not to.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t be so damn stupid!” Lucien gave an abrupt, painful laugh that ended in choking. When he caught his breath again he went on. “He gave her the pretty things she liked, and the cocaine she needed.”

“So then why did he kill her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t him.”

“Niccolo?”

“I don’t know. He could be dead too.” Lucien gulped.“Maybe it was that verminous little toad in the lavender velvet.”

“Ash. Why would he kill them?”

“I don’t know.”

Henry waited.

Lucien sighed. He looked away, avoiding Henry’s eyes. “I’ve crossed a few people, made enemies. If Niccolo is dead, whoever killed him probably thought it was me. We looked rather alike. In the half light of that passage, and if he was with Sadie …” He stopped. His face filled with regret and a peculiar kind of pain that was extraordinarily honest, without self-pity, as if he could see his loss with new clarity. “We were always headed to destruction, she and I.”

Crow looked at Henry, his expression anxious.

Henry nodded and moved away, allowing Lucien to rest, at least for a while.