Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (32 page)

At the centre of the narrow chapel that ran from the back of the church, a ledgerstone stood upright on its side. It looked as if it had been raised from the floor like the cover of a great old Bible. The blackness under the stone gaped wide. The smell of something putrid rose from deep beneath the chapel. Candles burned at each of the four corners of the hole.

Matthias and Lord Kite had led the way. I thought about running down the aisle and out of the church into the night, but the Barons closed ranks behind me, forcing me to follow the men at the head of our silent procession. They were excited, I could feel it. If I looked to the side or turned around, their eyes slid away from mine, but I knew they were all watching me.

At a gesture from Matthias, Lord Kite stopped and turned to face us as we gathered at the end of the chapel. Matthias shrugged back his hood and blinked. Even in the candlelight I could see the extraordinary blue of his eyes. His hair was a reddish gold blond that threw off a halo. You might almost have taken him for a well-built angel, if you didn’t know what he was capable of.

Lord Kite stared direct at me. He seemed to know exactly where I was.

‘Before we conclude our gathering this evening we must witness an execution.’

He paused and the muscle beneath his eye twitched again before he continued.

‘We have not had cause to open the vault for at least a dozen years now. Our newest . . . brother has joined us on a significant occasion. Bring him.’

Matthias forced his way past me and through the knot of men gathered at the entrance to the chapel. I stared at the hole in the ground and then at Lord Kite. Why did he ask about Joey? Out of habit I reached to my bodice feeling for the comforting bump of the ring and the Christopher.

I dropped my hand.

There was a shuffling sound from behind. We all turned.

A hooded figure stumbled down the steps. Matthias forced the man forward until he stood just a couple of foot from the open vault. A ball tightened in my chest. I couldn’t tell if it was my heart about to burst or the beginning of a scream loud enough to bring every stone tumbling down on our heads.

‘Remove the hood, Matthias.’

I dropped my eyes to the floor. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want the last sight of my brother to be here, like this. I rifled through every part of my mind, desperate to find something, some way to make this stop.

‘Kitty?’

My head snapped up.

Oh, thank God!

The moment the words went through my head I regretted them. To this day, I regret thinking them more than anything I’ve ever said aloud.

‘Danny!’ I reached out, but Matthias came between us.

‘This man has sinned.’ Lord Kite rubbed his hands. His palms rustled together like dry leaves. ‘Tell us how you sinned, Daniel.’

Danny stared at me like he couldn’t believe I was there. Bruises spread like mould across his face, his nose was crusted with blood and knocked out of line. Around his wrists and bare ankles bracelets of torn skin showed where he’d been bound. He opened his swollen lips and I saw the stumps of broken teeth in his bleeding gums. Christ! What had they done to him?

I saw a light flicker in his bloodshot eyes. He tried to twist his wreck of a mouth into a smile.

‘Y . . . you’ve come for me, haven’t you? Like you came for Peggy. She’s right – you’re a marvel, Kitty Peck.’

My mouth was suddenly dry as the sawdust floor of The Gaudy’s workshop. This wasn’t like that time under the warehouse.

‘Tell us your sin, Daniel!’

At the command Matthias jerked him forward so that he fell in a heap at Lord Kite’s feet and then he kicked him in the stomach. Danny cried out and folded into a ball at the edge of the yawning pit.

‘Stop this. You can’t . . .’ The words came out before I could master them. It was what they wanted. I heard muttering. The air around us changed as if it was suddenly alive.

Lord Kite smiled. ‘You know this man, I believe?’

I nodded once.

‘He is part of your estate and yet you have not controlled him. Tell us how much you owe, Daniel. I have the exact figure. If you lie, I will know.’

Danny tried to pull himself to a kneeling position. He bent double clutching his stomach and I heard him mumble. As he swung his bloodied head and caught sight of the pit at his back he twisted his hand into the tattered cotton of his shirt. I saw his knuckles whiten.

‘Again, Daniel. We cannot hear you.’

‘T . . . twenty.’ Danny coughed up something black and looked up at me. ‘For pity’s sake, Kit, make it stop.’

I whipped around to face them all. ‘I’ll pay it. Twenty stinking pounds is nothing to you. Paradise can shoulder that. This is ridiculous.’ My voice came out shrill and the stones bounced back a thin echo of that last word.

Ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous.

It sounded weak.

Lord Kite grinned wider. ‘You are right. To execute a man for twenty pounds would be . . . extreme.
Twenty thousand pounds
, however, is a different matter. I’ve no doubt that you could bear even that, but where would it end? What would it profit us? This is about making an example. That sum is correct, is it not, Daniel?’

Danny bowed his head. ‘I . . . I can pay it b . . . back – all of it. Tell them, Kit – you’ll make it right. You’ll help me, won’t you?’

I clasped my hands in front of me. I felt my bag bump against my thigh through the satin. Such a clumsy, pointless, female thing.

Danny croaked again, ‘I . . . I just need t . . . time and a run of luck.’

Lord Kite steepled his fingers. ‘I am afraid your time and your luck have just run out.’

‘Kit, please. Make them listen.’ Danny shuffled towards me. He reached out and clutched the hem of my dress. ‘I was tricked. They said my credit was good. They encouraged me to play and to borrow and then to play and to borrow again and again until I didn’t know where I was. And every time the debt got trebled. Please, Kit – make it stop. I will pay – somehow. I give you my word.’

I couldn’t see straight for the tears glassing up my eyes.

‘Now, Matthias.’ Lord Kite’s voice cracked like a whip.

‘No!’ I tried to snatch the man’s cloak, but I was a fly on the rump of a dray horse. Matthias flicked me aside as he aimed a kick at Danny’s midriff. There was a scuffle as Danny tried to fend off the blow. He caught hold of the swinging leg, but Matthias reached down and yanked up a handful of the thick dark hair Danny had always been so particular about. He dragged him by it to the brink of the pit, forcing him to look down.

‘Oh Jesus – no, please.’ Danny began to whimper. I knew then that he understood completely what was about to happen.

‘You can’t do this!’ I tried to run across to him, but arms folded around me from behind, pinning me like a moth to the stones.

Matthias rocked Danny back and then with one vicious lunge, he sent him toppling forward into the darkness. After a long moment there was a sickening thud. Then from somewhere far below, I heard Danny wail. The hollow sound echoed from black depths, climbing to a howl of agony and terror that sang out from the arches around us.

The man holding me loosened his grip. Lord Kite wiped his mouth with the tips of his fingers – a dainty, prissy gesture like a duchess who’d swallowed a fly.

‘Let us depart in peace.’

Peace?
I stared at him, couldn’t he hear Danny down there? This wasn’t the back end of a Sunday service.

‘Our business is concluded.’ He reached for Matthias’s hand and paused.

‘Except for one last thing. As we have a new brother among us, the right of sealing must go to him. Come forward.’

At first I didn’t realise who he meant. I waited for someone else to step out of line, all the while hearing Danny screaming from under the stones. He was calling my name now, over and over.

Lord Kite held his head to one side. ‘Ah, you do not have a title, but we have already agreed on one, have we not, brothers?’

There was a general mutter of assent.

‘Step forward, Lady Linnet, and seal your bondsman into his tomb.’

I dragged my eyes from the open vault. I couldn’t do that, not to Danny, not to Peggy. She was carrying their child. They were going to be a family. I shook my head and the tears brimmed over to streak down my face.

‘Lady Ginger made a strong case for you, but perhaps, after all, you are not worthy?’ Lord Kite gestured to the Barons gathered at my back. ‘Perhaps we should look elsewhere for a successor? Perhaps Lady Linnet does not have the . . . heart for this work?’

My grandmother’s voice rang through my head.

‘You will have to be dead here . . . if you truly want to protect Paradise.’

Cold and hard as a diamond.

‘What must I do?’ The words came out as a whisper.

Lord Kite nodded.

‘It is a simple mechanism. The stone is levered and weighted. All you need do is touch it and it will fall into place.’

I swallowed and walked forward, trying to block my ears to the desperate sounds coming from below. Perhaps there was a way to save him? I could come back with some of the lads and some tools from the workshop. He’d be down there in the black five, maybe six, hours at most, but he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he?

It would be days before a man died down there.

Cold and hard as a diamond.

I stood behind the ledgerstone and brushed my hand against it, trying not to use any force or pressure. Instantly there was a grating, grinding sound and it began to move, slowly, gracefully, folding itself back into place like Swami Jonah’s magic box.

Lord Kite clapped once and then again. As the sound echoed off the walls of the chapel, they all joined in. Gradually the applause built to a thunder of approval like the times when I swung high in the cage. I stared at the leering faces circled around me.

I wanted to spit at them.

‘Bravo!’ Lord Kite performed a mockery of a bow. He raised his hands and the clapping stopped.

‘We have used Bartholomew’s vault for hundreds of years, Lady Linnet. In the last century, one of our more practically minded brothers made some refinements. You will recall I said that it was mechanical?’

I looked at the moving ledgerstone behind him. Any moment now it would complete its journey.

‘By closing it you have reset the device. It cannot be opened again for one hundred days.’

There was a soft thud as the slab settled into place and dust flew up around us in the candlelight.

‘Lady?’

I shook my head and walked to the stairs. Tan Seng closed the doors behind me. He didn’t say another word. I wondered if it had always been like this when she came back. I wondered if my grandmother’s soul had been eaten away by the things she’d seen and the things she’d done.

A door opened somewhere above.

‘Fannella!’

Lucca clattered down the stairs until we were level. He caught my hand, but I shrugged him away and carried on up. I’d let down the veil of my hat to cover my face. I didn’t want anyone to look at me. Beneath the lace, my eyes burned in my head like coals in a fire.

In the carriage I’d waited for the tears to come, only they didn’t. I wasn’t surprised. I could weep every hour of every day for the rest of my life but nothing would wash it away. Nothing would clean my head of the sound of Danny sobbing in the dark.

Alone in the dark.

At the second landing I paused and looked over the rail. Lucca was staring up, folding his hands over and over. Lok patted his shoulder and tried to usher him gently back into the parlour.

‘Kitty?’ Lucca wound his fingers together like he was praying. ‘Why won’t you speak? Tell us, tell me – what happened tonight.’

I turned away, crossed the landing and went into the little room I’d set up as an office. The remains of a fire were burning in the grate. It was the only light.

I locked the door behind me, threw my bag onto the couch and pulled off my hat, letting it fall to the rug. I went to the hearth and stared at my face in the mirror over the mantle. In the semi-dark my eyes glittered in the glass like beads of hard black jet. They were usually blue – if I was given to vanity, I might even have said that in the right light they had a violet tinge to them. But not tonight.

I unbuttoned my gloves at the wrists. It seemed such an ordinary, commonplace thing to do. As I eased my right hand from the leather I glanced down at the fingers that had brushed, so lightly, so gently, against the slab.

I let the glove fall onto the coals. In a moment the sickly smell of burning skin came up. I watched as the glove clenched up on itself before shrivelling to a blackened fist.

Over my shoulder in the glass I saw my desk, the wooden surface covered with a jumble of papers – names, addresses, numbers, accounts. On the top there was a bill listing the craftsmen about to fix up The Comet. They were lucky, there was enough work for them now to keep them occupied until 1884.

I turned. All of Paradise was laid out there before me.

Peggy was there somewhere. My kind, sweet Peggy who had Danny’s child growing inside her. How could I face her knowing what I’d done? How could I ever look that poor kid in the eye when, every time, I’d see Danny reflected back? I could never tell her – some things are best not known. No, I’d have to keep it locked away, festering inside me like Lady Ginger’s canker.

I closed my eyes and lashed out, sweeping everything from the desk. Papers scattered across the room. The brass inkstand clanked to the boards and came to rest on its side, leaking a pool of black that seeped into the fringes of the rug. I heard, rather than saw, the oil lamp with the dainty patterned glass smash to pieces against the fire guard.

I sank into the chair and slumped forward, resting my forehead in my hands.

There are seven deadly sins, that’s what Nanny Peck taught me and Joey. I ran through them – anger, lust, gluttony, avarice, envy, sloth and pride. That last was reckoned to be the worst. But the Bible was wrong. I knew now that there are eight deadly sins and the eighth is the worst of them.

Betrayal.

I looked down at the drawer to my left. After a moment I reached out and ran my fingers over the looped handle. I drew my hand away like it had been burned, but then I grabbed the metal and pulled the drawer open. There was only one thing there, a small cloth-covered bundle. I took it and went to the fire.

I weighed the bundle, passing the little package wrapped in bright Oriental silk from hand to hand and then I knelt and pulled the black string ties. A sweet familiar smell rose from the fabric as twenty thin black sticks rolled onto the rug. I took one, held it to the embers until the tip glowed red.

Then I brought it to my lips.