Instruments of Darkness

PART VI
1

WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE 1780, SUTTON STREET, NEAR SOHO SQUARE, LONDON

Graves tumbled back in from the street. “Not a carriage or a chair to be had.” He saw that Clode was on his knees, fastening a cloak around Jonathan’s neck. The young man looked up. “How far away is it?” he asked.

Graves ran a hand through his hair. “Three, four miles perhaps. It depends if we go through the streets or into the fields.”

Miss Chase was tying a bundle together over her arm, tightening the knot as she spoke.

“Streets. We may be seen, but we’ll be better able to hide. Susan, are you ready?”

The little girl was pale, but steady enough on her feet. She nodded.

Miss Chase took her by the shoulders. “Whatever happens, you must never let go of my hand, do you understand?”

She nodded again.

Graves touched Clode on the elbow and pulled him to one side. “Are you armed?”

The young man shook his head. “All I have is a penknife.”

“Go into the kitchen and get a couple of good knives. The servants will lock the house after us and take refuge with the neighbors.” Graves put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, gripped hard. “Come on, we have waited too long as it is.”

The little party stumbled out into the dark. The black of the sky was stained orange in places by the various fires. People hurried past them, bundles of shadow and fear, their faces gleaming with sweat where the trembling lights of torches caught them, like passersby in the tricks of Caravaggio. Graves urged them on. The familiar streets, the uneven way beneath their feet as known to them as their own hands, seemed to have been caught and transformed with the powers of nightmare. Jonathan had tripped before they got past their first neighbor’s front door; Graves turned to see him being lifted into Clode’s arms. He hung around the young man’s neck, struggling to find comfort, his hands clasped under Clode’s dark hair.

Graves looked about him. There were too many faces-he could not tell friend from fiend in this dark. He plowed forward, aware of Miss Chase and Susan in step behind him, Clode at the rear, one hand supporting Jonathan, the other tucked ready in his waistcoat. Graves could tell he had his fingers on the handle of a carving knife, for his own hand was folded around its twin.

They turned down through Soho. Every square seemed alight with hungry flames and drunken laughter. A man staggered backward almost into his arms; he stank of brandy and soot. Graves shoved him aside.

There was a scream to his right. He spun round to see a young woman, her hair loose and wild, a baby in her arms, screaming up at the roof of a shabby building opposite which flexed and billowed with orange flame.

“Oh God! Where am I to go! Where am I to go?” she screamed as two men, their blue cockades still visible in the glow, poured out of the house. One pushed her hard in the chest, so she sprawled on the pavement.

“Back to Rome, whore!” he said, then turned to laugh with his companion. The woman folded her arms around the baby in her lap and rocked from side to side.

Susan ripped her hand from Miss Chase’s grip and ran to the woman’s side. She pushed her little purse into her hands.

“Take this! Find somewhere safe.”

The woman looked up and crossed herself, sobbing as she spoke.

“Bless you, miss! But have you a place?”

“Yes, in Earl’s Court. But we should all leave here.”

“Susan, for the love of God, get up!” shouted Miss Chase.

The woman nodded. “I shall,” she vowed. “I’ll never come back here again.”

Miss Chase dragged the girl up. “Susan, now! Do not let go of me again!”

Susan trotted beside her to where the two men were waiting, watching the crowd.

“She had a baby, Miss Chase!” she panted.

Graves was looking around into the darkness.

“Very well, Susan,” he said. “Now come on.” He saw Clode start. “What?”

“Nothing-I don’t know. Let’s move.”

Crowther pushed open the door to his home a little after midnight, lit the candle he found waiting for him and carried it into the study. His own letter was waiting for him. He read, holding the page by its edge as if he was nervous the poison might leak out over his fingers, then laid it gently down on the tabletop. Drawing fresh paper toward him he began to write, recording his observations of each body as he would if studying them for his own interest, or laying them out for his colleagues to ponder over. Then, sharpening his pen once more, he began to write down each thing they knew about the inhabitants and history of Thornleigh Hall, tried to watch his words grow like a spider’s web, turn the points of contact between people and events into a mesh, a form. He knew what he believed, that Wicksteed was the center of it, but all he seemed to do was glower in the middle of it and refuse to be touched by the strands that swung around him. Just the bottle, and the scrap of embroidery, each so explainable, grazed him, but Patience was gone.

Crowther looked up and his eye rested on the dried black hand that stood, fingers pointing casually downward, on the top of his preparation cabinet. It was black with resin, but the veins and arteries which had fed it in life, the muscles that had given it motion, were highlighted in blue and yellow wax. If those muscles contracted, the fist would clench. He stretched his own hands for a moment, then began to read again what he had written. Where did he have to press, what motion to make, so that the spider would leap up in a fury, dance and hang himself on his own threads.

The streets were quieter here, and giving way to fields along the King’s New Road to Kensington. Daniel had lost feeling in the arm that supported Jonathan’s weight; he mechanically followed the shapes in front of him and counted his steps. He thought of Mrs. Westerman and Miss Trench at Caveley. He wondered what they would think, seeing him now, carrying the heir to all that wealth and pomp in his arms, covered in soot and dirty from the road. He hoped they would think well of him. He missed a step and landed hard. The jolt shook Jonathan out of the doze he had drifted in for the last half hour. He stirred against Clode’s neck, adjusted his grip. Clode had grown up without younger siblings, so this sensation of a child’s arms clasped in such complete trust around his shoulders was new to him. He began to envy men with children of their own. Jonathan mumbled something to him.

“What is it, Jon? I did not hear you.”

“I said have you seen Thornleigh?”

Clode smiled in the darkness. “I have. I’ve not been inside, though.”

“Are there horses?”

“Lots.”

The small boy sighed contentedly, then suddenly his body stiffened and he cried out, “There!”

Clode spun round, pulling the knife free from his waistcoat. He heard Graves running back toward them. Jonathan scrambled down to the ground, but kept at his side under the shelter of Clode’s free arm.

“What was it, Jonathan?”

“I saw him, I’m sure! That end of the street where the lamp is.”

The noise of the riots was muffled and distant; when a shutter caught in the breeze and knocked against its frame the noise was like a rifle shot. Graves lifted his hand to his mouth.

“Show yourself if you dare!” he cried.

The lamp continued to swing slightly, but nothing else in the street moved.

Graves leaned toward Clode and whispered, “Go ahead with the others. I’ll wait here to see we are not followed and come after.”

Daniel did not take his eyes from the patch of street in front of him but shook his head.

“No. You know these roads best and besides, we should not split the guard. If we are being followed and he slips past you, I do not like the odds of Miss Chase and I against this man and his friend.”

Graves hesitated. Miss Chase stepped up to them, put her free hand lightly on his arm.

“He is right, Graves. And let us go by the busier routes. This is too isolated a place.”

Her touch acted on Graves like a charm. He nodded. Clode lifted Jonathan into his arms again, and smiled at him.

“You are our lookout, my boy. Keep your eyes open and sing out if you see anything more.”

The boy looked a little white, and tightened his grip, but nodded.

In the distance they heard one of the great bells beginning to peal the hour. Graves put his knife back into his waistcoat and turned toward Knight’s Bridge.

“One o’clock. Come then, and let us hurry.”