Copperhead (12 page)

“I daresay,” murmured Helen. She peeked into the large drawing room. The tidy room she’d sat in only yesterday for the meeting was dismantled—the big items gone, the small items being packed into trunks and crates. It was oddly disorienting.

“You’ll have heard about the lady then?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “Terrible. And with that small boy, too.”

“None of hers, but for all that she was better for him than that cold father of his,” said the woman, lowering her voice. “Poor thing is just sitting in the attic where
she
was, and his father in and out and who-knows-where.”

“That’s actually why I’ve come,” said Helen, leaping into it. “I wanted to stop by and chat with Tam. I thought he could use a friendly face.” Stop by and get him out of here was more like it, but she managed not to say that. She added, “Millicent Grimsby and I were friends,” which was stretching the point, but still, she thought they might have been, if they had had the opportunity to really know each other.

The woman shrugged. “You can go up in the attic for all of me. I’ve got no instructions to the contrary.”

Helen went slowly up the stairs. Her heart went all tight again. Tam had had time to think about what happened to his stepmamma. Perhaps he knew she was responsible, she and Jane. He was not so young that he could not put things together.

Almost she fled, but the thought of Millicent lying still on the table steeled her spine and she went up.

Carefully she opened the door to the stairs that led to the garret, and went up and up. Her mind was full of poor Mrs. Grimsby.

The slanted room was empty—no furniture, no birdcages, no people. No daybed. No Millicent.

She turned, looking at where the daybed had been. She could see it still, Millicent Grimsby, pale as death, staring into nothing.…

“Come to gloat?”

Helen’s heart leapt from her chest as she turned to see Mr. Grimsby.

He was so tall. Had he always been so tall? And he wore a finely cut suit of grey-black, and his eyes glittered.

She could not think what to say, but then he took a step toward her, out of the shadows, and the glitter in his eyes resolved to a stony black. “No, you have always been kind and asked after Millicent,” he said. “I know you are not responsible for your sister’s actions.” He stretched his hands over where the daybed had been, and Helen saw that they were old, scarred hands, with thin ropes of scar tissue that ran up and disappeared into his sleeves.

“I am so sorry for what happened,” Helen said, the words tumbling out, as they might to someone less frightening, to someone who was simply dealing with loss and was not, perhaps, the most powerful man in the city, with the ear of the Prime Minister. “Is she … is she still the same?”

A nod. “My Millicent,” he said, and the words slipped out as if he was, after all, just a man. He ran a hand through his closely cropped black-and-grey hair, and she saw another of those ropy scars. It etched a white line in his hair, stopping just above his ear. It almost humanized him, that he could have an accident like anyone else.

Gently Helen persisted. “But where is she?”

Grimsby’s eyes sharpened, glittering again. He swung on her like a hawk, and he seemed seven feet tall once more, and not a bit human. “Someplace safe. What are you doing here?”

Steel, and the right, bright words. “I was so worried about you, dear Mr. Grimsby,” Helen said, and she made the pretty faces that she made to Alistair and his cronies when she wanted to be on their good side, to be petted and admired and not told to go to bed. “It must be so hard to deal with this situation! I can’t think what I would do if something happened to Alistair. I should have so much to manage, the iron doctors to call, remedies to try, and hardly time for anything or anyone else.”

“It has been busy,” he admitted.

“Therefore I thought I would just pop in and see what I could do. I know Alistair will have thought of everything to help and my little help could hardly be that useful. Still, I thought if there was something you or Tam needed—”

“Who? Oh, young Thomas. No, no.” He waved her off, but she pressed on.

“—perhaps just to take Tam on an outing, so you would have more time to deal with the situation.…”

He stopped and looked at her. Really looked at her, and she had the same sense as before that he was capable of penetrating her motives with one searching glance. But all he said was, “I’m so pleased you decided to wear our necklace. To join our glorious cause.”

It was very odd to hear Mr. Grimsby say things like “glorious cause” in his cold dry voice, she reflected. Someone so fanatical should slaver and gleam. But she was not going to allow him to distract her. “Now Mr. Grimsby, you see it might be helpful if someone took your son to find more of his snakes and bugs and slimy et ceteras. Surely you have so much to do, if you are shutting up the house in addition to tending to Millicent.”

“Perhaps I am too hasty,” he mused. “Yes, you may take him for an—outing, as you say. When?”

“Anytime,” said Helen, dismissing everything else she had to do from her mind. “Right now, even.”

“No, tomorrow,” he said. “I will send him to you tomorrow. Then we will be ready.”

Ready? thought Helen, but all she said was, “How lovely; I shall look forward to helping out.”

He said nothing, only stared at her, so she expected she was dismissed. Which probably made her dig her heels in, for she said, “Can I see him?”

He looked at her as if this were the strangest request anyone had ever had. She reflected crossly that that seemed to be a trait of his. “Young Thomas?”

“I would like to tell him how sorry I am,” she said. If Mr. Grimsby thought he could shut his son up in the bedroom or cellar or wherever he had him, he had another think coming.

Silently Mr. Grimsby motioned her back down the garret, and led the way through the house to the back door, where he propped open the door with hand in a gesture that clearly meant: You can go through this door, but I am going back to lurking in garrets or whatever else it is I do. It was very rude, but as she would rather be out of his company posthaste, she didn’t particularly mind the rudeness.

Tam was sitting on the damp ground in the cool morning, wrapped in coat and scarf and gloves. A little patch of sun had burned off some of the fog where he sat, but it was still chilly. He was busy tracking something on the ground.

Helen went down the steps into the back garden. She got all the way to Tam before she turned and saw Mr. Grimsby still standing, looking at them with covetous, glittering eyes. Did he know she was trying to get Tam away from his influence? She knelt, and Tam flicked his eyes sideways at her. Up close she could see that his face was unwashed; his cheeks streaked with the tracks of old tears.

“Tam,” she said gently. “I am so sorry about your stepmamma.”

He looked up at her, and when she saw his bright, wounded eyes, she knew the next question. “Did you make it happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, keeping her face turned away from the door. “We were helping your stepmamma so she would always be safe. But something went wrong.” Helen did not know if there was a better way to talk to small children; all she could do was treat Tam the way she wished someone would have treated her—tell him the truth, as much as she could. To the side she saw the door swing shut; Mr. Grimsby was gone. “The fey are dangerous,” she said. “But I’m trying to find my sister, and I hope my sister can fix your stepmamma.”

He looked down at his jar, which had two june bugs thudding around in it. Slowly he opened the jar and watched them crawl out. “I didn’t tell about you being up there with her,” he said. “I’m a good liar.”

“Er. Thank you,” said Helen. She squeezed his shoulder. “Your father says I can take you for an outing tomorrow. Where would you like to go?”

A bit of interest played around his features. “The Natural History Museum? Stepmamma said they have a big reptile exhibit with basilisks and copperhead hydras.” The big words flowed out with the ease of much use, though Helen was quite sure she had not heard of any of those creatures at his age, and even now could not tell you if a basilisk was a reptile or amphibian.

“Done,” said Helen. “It’ll be fun. I like snakes.”

“I know,” he said, and pointed at her necklace. “My dad gave me a pin like that. See?” He tugged on his coat lapel to show her.

Marking them. Owning them. Helen’s fingers closed on the copper. She wanted to rip their emblem off, snap the chain. And yet she did not. So it was a hydra—Grimsby’s hydra. Wasn’t it proof that Alistair cared about her? Some days she needed that proof. She let the necklace fall, smiling down at Tam. “Till tomorrow, then. And we’ll find you some more bugs. I’m afraid I lost yours.”

Tam watched one of the june bugs crawl around the lip of the jar, uncertain what to do with its freedom. He picked up the lid and held it over the jar, trapping the bug inside. Raised it, lowered it. “Do they have
dwarvven
in the museum?” he said.

“Um,” said Helen. “I don’t think so. You mean like pictures of them?”

“Father said they should be rounded up and shot, and then the potato-faced man said they should be put on display as a lesson, and then Father said someday the last dwarf will be like the stuffed bear in the museum. I like the stuffed bear. I can see his claws up close. I would like to see the stuffed dwarf.”

Helen recognized the “potato-faced man” as an accurate if unflattering description of Boarham. “I’m afraid there aren’t any stuffed
dwarvven,
” she said. It disturbed her to hear the ugly slur “dwarf” fall as easily as “basilisk” from the boy’s lips, but she supposed it was inevitable with that father of his. She stopped over the next bit and decided to say it anyway. “Whatever they say while drinking, take it with a grain of salt. I mean, it isn’t all true … or
right
.”

He nodded as if he understood, although she wasn’t sure he did. But the door was being opened by the cleaning woman, and clearly Helen’s time was up. “Tomorrow,” she promised, and left.

*   *   *

Back down the street toward the trolley. Helen was getting awfully sick of the trolley. She reached the stop in time to see one pulling away, and then she regretted saying she was sick of the trolley, for it was even more annoying to want to get on one and not be able.

Because it was a nice neighborhood, there was a small shelter, empty except for a
dwarvven
man just walking into it. She went in after him and stood there, stamping her feet against the cold. The brick wall around the Grimsbys’ back garden had dampened the gale, but here it whisked through the street in full force, blowing dead leaves before it, covering and uncovering the swathes of blue that lined the sidewalks. Tomorrow she would not take the trolley, that’s all. She would take Tam in the car to the Natural History Museum … and oh goodness, Helen, how foolish were you? Supposedly you were doing such a clever job of sneaking out, and now you went and saw your husband’s good friend and made arrangements to take his son out the next day? This is where rash decisions led you. The motive was good but the execution was abysmal.

Relax,
she told herself. Alistair has never
expressly
forbidden you to leave. You are a grown woman, capable of leaving the house on your own. And yet she shook her head, despairing, running through increasingly ridiculous options in her head. She could get Mary to pretend to be Helen. She could ask Mr. Grimsby to lie about her visit.

People trickled into the shelter, waiting for the next trolley to pull up. Gentlemen, mostly, in worn but decent overcoats, copper lapel pins winking in buttonholes. A fellow in a soft cap eyed her and she tugged her own copper necklace out where it was more plainly visible. If she was marked as the wife of a top party member she might as well enjoy its benefits of implied protection. She moved away from him, closer to the
dwarvven
man, studying the inevitable lineup of posters. Trolley times and fares. A curling one for
Painted Ladies Ahoy!
that she smoothed out. She realized she had seen it before, and not known till now that the darling ink caricature of the central painted lady was clearly Frye.

“This shelter’s becoming crowded, isn’t it? Perhaps someone should know his place a little better,” said the man in the cap. He was staring at the young
dwarvven
.

The
dwarvven
folded his arms and did not budge. He appeared to be in his early twenties—a dangerous age for getting into trouble. “Know it as well as you do.”

“Not really right for your kind to be here with a lady present.”

“By lady I suppose you mean yourself?”

The man in the cap went red and the mood in the shelter suddenly turned much uglier. Helen could feel the overcoated men slowly shifting, moving into a circle to enclose the
dwarvven
.

The man in the cap bent down as though he were lecturing a child, tapped the
dwarvven
on the nose. “One people,” he said. “
One race
.”

The dwarvven was dying to take the first swing, she could tell. He settled for spitting: “You’ve learned your lesson well.”

Just then the trolley pulled up and Helen saw her cue. She tapped on the man with the cap’s sleeve and slid into the circle. “Thank you so kindly for protecting me,” she said to the man in the cap, “and I feel much safer now. We were just going.” She tugged on the
dwarvven
’s arm and pulled him through the openmouthed circle of men. Everyone was momentarily too stunned to resist, and Helen stepped onto the open trolley, motioning the
dwarvven
man to follow her.

But what had worked so beautifully with the
dwarvven
grandmother did not work with this young man.

He growled at her, “Don’t plan to owe a debt to a
Copperhead,
” and turned away, back into the crowd. The air seemed to crackle with electricity. A knife flicked into his hand, and he crouched, motioning at the men to dare step forward. The overcoated men surrounded him, ringing him, a circle of leering hydras. He was so small compared to them, and yet as he gestured with his knife they backed up a step. “I’m tired of bending over to you lot,” he shouted. “Don’t think you can tell us what to do. Don’t think it’s not going to come back to bite you.” A pile of maple leaves whisked furiously past, uncovering more and more blue on the sidewalk.