The Devil's Mask (22 page)

I could not face returning to the Carthy household. The thought of little Anne and her mother there, waiting for him to come back, prompted a stab of guilt so sharp I fancied I could taste blood in my mouth. But I could not put my plan into effect until the small hours, so I resolved to walk both the time and my agitation away between now and then.

The streets were darkening, as emphasised by the dots of light in windowpanes, the occasional yellow slash out from under the doorjamb of a tavern, and haloes of brightness jerked here and there on the tips of lamp-bearers' poles. I threaded my way through St Nicholas Market and let my feet take me out to St Augustine's Reach. There the water looked like tar. I found myself drawn up the hill towards the cathedral. There was a rehearsal of some sort going on inside; the same snatch of organ music pumped weakly across the dark grass again and again. Since moving down to Carthy's I had not attended services here – or anywhere – regularly, but the three of us, John, Sebastian and myself, had flanked our father through sixteen years of Sunday mornings in this church before I left. The great embossed door stood ajar. I stepped inside, stood blinking for a second in the candlelight, then made my way over the smooth flags towards our pew. In here, the organist's practising was loud enough to be impressive, but as the phrase he was attempting to perfect repeated itself
again and again I felt as if I were listening to a great orator who had lost his mind. There should have been reassurance in the pew's familiarity, hope in the vaulted ceiling, and solace in the great calm of the place, but when I shut my eyes to reach for a prayer, the enormous roof above me was immediately transformed into an upturned ship's hull, and the familiar feel of the wood beneath my hands was hatefully cloying, and the calm, the calm, was simply emptiness, vast and unforgiving as the sea.

I felt as if I were drowning.

The risk was that I'd pull people down with me.

I should do what I could to cut those closest to me free.

I reeled out of the cathedral; the organist may have been distracted by my footsteps, for he stuttered in his playing as I jinked back out into the night. Within ten minutes I was knocking upon the door of the Alexanders' house in Queen Square.

Spenser, the footman, drew it open, and pretended for a second that he did not recognise me. His face thawed unnaturally slowly and he responded to my request – that he announce me to Lilly – with a demonstrable lack of urgency. I was left standing upon the chequered tiles. Eight this way, eight that. My father taught me to play chess as a boy, and he never let me win, believing the victory would taste bad if he did. Yet if anything, the opposite was true. For many years after I became the better player, I held off winning for fear of how bad I knew defeating him would make me feel. The footman's delay worked to my advantage. I'd calmed down somewhat by the time Lilly, her hands clasped together with excitement, appeared.

‘Oh, it's been days! They're just finishing up with dinner. Have you eaten? Would you join us? Or shall I have Spenser show us into the drawing room. There's cake!'

‘Cake.'

‘Yes! It's a new recipe. Spiced ginger. And the icing is made with scrapings of orange peel!'

‘Delicious. The drawing room, then.'

This answer pleased Lilly. Apparently, it amused the footman, too. He opened the drawing room door with a voila and gave a complicit bow as he showed us across the threshold. This false solicitude gave him away. Knowing he would waste no time in telling Lilly's mother of my arrival, I cut to the chase.

‘There's something I have to tell you.'

Lilly rounded upon me and looked me over, nibbling her lower lip, and before I could continue she said, ‘And I you, I'm afraid.' Her excitement had a nervous, unsettled quality to it, which made me feel suddenly protective. Or perhaps it was that any excuse to prevaricate was better than none. I nodded at her to go on.

‘You mustn't be disappointed,' she said.

‘I'm sure, whatever it is, that I'll cope.'

‘But it has to do with the wedding. There's a problem, and it means a delay.'

Lilly was beckoning me to sit down, and I did so, nodding gravely, but in truth it felt as if a weight had been lifted from my chest.

‘I see. Well, I'm sure –'

Lilly perched on a footstool next to my chair and looked up at me, her eyes filmy. I gathered myself to suggest that she
tell me all about the difficulty, but she leapt up and rushed to the door – in search of the maid with the cake, I suspected – before I could begin. Her silhouette, leaning out into the hall, her chin uplifted and expectant, was perfect, and I knew for sure that she was aware of it, and was deploying it now to hold my attention and steer us around whatever difficulty it was she perceived stood in our way. There was something futile and persistent about her which again stirred my affection, and her ringlets, in the lamplight, had a beguiling amber glow.

‘What is it, Lilly?'

She turned back into the room slowly and her hands, which had been clasped together, dropped to her sides.

‘The reception rooms, for the wedding breakfast … there has been some mix-up … a double booking … we shall have to put back the date.'

She was looking at the nest of dull red coals, pulsing low in the grate, and not at me, and I knew that she was making this excuse up, and not for her own benefit; she was lying. What's more, she knew I knew this to be the case, and was prepared, if fleetingly, to reveal as much.

‘I suspect this makes the revelation of your own news unnecessary,' she said quietly, ‘for now at least.'

‘A double booking?'

‘Yes. No doubt Papa could offer them more money to secure the rooms in our favour, but he knows the other interested party … something to do with a dinner for foreigners … and … it's perhaps for the best. Luckily the invitations have not been sent out yet. We can have them reprinted.'

Those fine hands, still hanging disconsolately at her sides. I climbed out of my chair and took hold of them in my own. They were cool to touch.

‘The reason I came by this evening is to explain how –'

‘But there's no need now, is there?' she said, her fingers curling into mine.

‘I think I owe it to you to be truthful.'

‘You can't help but be, Inigo. These past weeks, I've seen it.'

‘You've seen what?'

‘At dinner the other night. The cutlery dancing on the table. And at the wretched poetry recital. Turning up late and distracted.'

‘And you think this signifies what exactly?'

‘Please don't make me spell it out.'

She sniffed and I looked down at her and she turned away. One of her hands slipped out from within mine. She used the heel of her thumb to rub at her cheek and sniffed again. ‘A delay just means a new date in the future, when we're, when you're –'

‘But Lilly,' I said, digging at my collar, which felt suddenly tight again. ‘I really must speak plainly, I must.'

A bustling noise behind me caused me to tense in my boots ahead of Mrs Alexander's arrival.

‘Lilly and I were talking …' I began.

‘Yes. I can see that. And yet cake was demanded! I've brought it myself. See. Here it is. Cake! Lilly? Shall I cut it or will you? To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure, Mr Bright? I hope your arrival at this hour, and unannounced, doesn't presage bad news. Explain yourself!'

Something caused the coals in the grate to shift and collapse forwards upon themselves now, so that a small spillage of ash fell across to the hearthstone, and this gave Lilly the excuse to break away from me and tend to it. She looked small, bent forwards like that, her shoulders narrow. I stepped forwards to help her.

‘Leave that, Lilly,' said Mrs Alexander. ‘Heavens! One of us playing the domestic is surely enough. Now. Do carry on. What were you talking about?'

Without pausing Lilly said brightly, ‘The new dog, mother. Lo and behold, Inigo does care what we call it, after all!' She stood up and turned around and brushed herself down. Her lips were already fixed in a cheerful smile. She advanced to the sideboard and put a hand on her mother's shoulder, suddenly authoritative, so that for an instant I saw the true depth of her knowledge of me, and felt ashamed. ‘Here,' she said, taking the knife. ‘Let me do that.'

Though a lamp would have helped me return to Stratton Street without splashing about in the mire, I was in no hurry, and a clandestine approach, even from this distance, seemed best. Skirting Back-Bridge Street I heard a commotion ahead and arrived adjacent to a house just as the argument within it spilled outside in the form of a barrel-chested woman in bare sleeves, her skirt awry. The door slammed behind her and she swore at it and turned around and fell silent immediately upon perceiving me. I held up my hands in a gesture of innocence, but she shrieked and began hammering at the door again. I put my head down and, blind-footed, hurried on my way.

I approached the Justice's quarters obliquely, pleased to note the four black windows in its face. To one side of the front door stood the pile of pallets upon which the Justice's cat had sought refuge from his daughter. As quietly as I could, I lifted the top pallet from the pile. Then I felt my way down the alleyway towards the rear of the building. Here was the back wall of the courtyard, a single storey of greasy brickwork. I leaned the pallet against this façade, put one foot on top of it, and thrust myself up to reach the top of the wall, where it met the sloping roofline. Without pausing to consider the consequences of failure, I hauled myself upwards, boots scrabbling beneath me. Chin, chest and midriff cleared the parapet; I swung a leg up to one side and banged my knee on
to the ledge. Up and over I went, my coat-front dragging across the gull-shit, until I was kneeling on the back of the low roof. I spread my weight evenly on all fours and held myself still for what felt like a long, long time, listening and watching. None of the rear windows of the Justice's house proper blinked to life, and I heard nothing from that direction. The only noise was a muffled cough, which drifted up from somewhere beneath me, but just the one, before the quiet thrum of the town pressed down from above again. Slowly, moving one limb at a time, I crawled forwards to the front lip of the courtyard roof. The recess beneath me was a square of deeper darkness, a shadow within shadows. I took a deep breath, swung my legs out over the void, dropped from chest to chin to fingertips, and let go. Though I tried to cushion the impact by landing with bent knees, the heaviness with which my heels struck the dirt floor jarred my teeth in their sockets. I saw the cask slamming into the deck of the
Belsize
again. It seemed the commotion must surely have disturbed somebody, but though I lay still for further long minutes, I could still hear nothing but the wind sniping through rigging in the distant docks and the yip of stray dogs.

It would not be possible for me to climb back up on to the overhang of the roof from inside the courtyard: if this gambit didn't pay off, I'd be stuck here overnight for Wheeler to find in the morning. A trickle of sweat threaded its way through my eyebrow and into my right eye. Very slowly, I rolled on to my side, brushed it away, and stood up. Again the soft snort behind me, whether coming from Blue or Ivan Brook I could not be sure. The darkness was the colour of wet slate, but it was not complete. Rectangles swam toward me as I moved
across the courtyard towards the rear entrance of Wheeler's lodgings. I reached the door, gripped the latch, held my breath, and eased it open. Utter quiet. I let the breath go, and stepped inside.

With one hand tracing the hallway dado rail and the light grey of my stockinged feet padding beneath me, I set off to the front of the house, found the front door, eased back its bolts, and stood it ajar. From there I headed to Wheeler's paperless office. To the right of his desk, on the wall, hung his pompous bunch of keys. I gripped the shafts so as to muffle any jangling, and lifted the bunch free. With the keys clutched to my chest, I soft-footed my way back down the hall, and was standing on one leg in the doorway, struggling to pull my boot back on one-handed, when the cat squirmed against my planted foot and very nearly undid me. Unsure of what it was for a second, I almost cried out. But no, I bent down and pushed the creature away and trod carefully across the courtyard to Blue's cell again. As stealthily as I could, I tried one and then another key in the lock.

‘It's the one with the square shank, Inigo,' Blue said matter-of-factly from within the cell's dark recess.

‘Christ! Hush!' I hissed.

‘He'll be drunk asleep by now,' the sailor went on, his normal voice deafening to me.

‘He has a family. Hold your tongue!'

‘Still, Blue's right,' a second, gravelly voice cut in. ‘If your slamming about all over the shop hasn't awoken him, a bit of talk out here is unlikely to make much difference.'

‘Please!'

Once Blue's door was open, I undid the labourer's. He was as innocent as the sailor, and besides, he'd be a help with what we had to do next. Both men's bravado quietened on the threshold of the house proper. We stole along the corridor and out of the front door, the cat a cut-out shape watching us from the stairs.

We were mud-encrusted to the knees, not to mention worn out, even before we began digging. The walk out to the hamlet of Horfield was along a road of rain-soaked clay: tough going in daylight, grindingly slow under cover of darkness. Still, I had plenty of time to explain my theory along the way. Ivan Brook took some convincing. His instinct told him that no amount of proving his innocence would add up to the benefit to be had from running away. But I suggested that in so fleeing Ivan would, in effect, be carrying out the court's transportation order in advance, and the labourer reluctantly agreed (‘I was thinking more of Swindon than Sydney Cove') to wait until after we'd assessed the evidence before deciding what to do.

We searched the cemetery for fresh graves at daybreak, having passed the small hours in the groundsman's hutch, huddling back to back for warmth. As I scanned the field for newly turned earth, it struck me how far away I was from my own world of turned pages. The boredom of the Dock Company's files seemed a positive paradise by contrast to this: a slope of slantwise headstones and rotting crosses, the lot tumbling down to a scraggy hawthorn hedge, black against the eaten-out sky. Corpse-fed grass, knee-high and rank with dew, soaked my boots and obscured the view, but we discovered where the women had been buried eventually.
Three oblongs of raised mud nosing the bottom of the slope as if intent on slipping their moorings and floating away.

The three of us gathered round the graves and looked down upon them in silence. Somewhere along the hedgerow a blackbird began singing. Ivan Brook was breathing heavily beside me. He passed the spade he had taken from the groundsman's shed from one hand to the other, then leaned upon it. I noticed that his knuckles were pale on the shaft.

I took the spade from him and he stumbled backwards a few paces, apologising to the ground.

The spade was heavy. I scraped at the topsoil of the nearest grave, once, twice, and again, fearing each time that the blade would bite something solid within the crust, which was ridiculous, as Blue made clear. He had taken a pick from the shed, but his torn thumb meant he was unable to swing it with any purpose. After three weak blows with it he paused, wincing, and said, ‘They sink even paupers below a man's waist.'

I took off my coat and handed it to Brook and I dug to the sound of the blackbird's chattering. The deeper I dug, the more the broken ground seemed to smell of decay, though I suppose this was my imagining. My shirt, tight across the shoulders, was soon damp with sweat, and the hole I'd created was small.

‘Here,' said Brook gruffly, returning to my side. ‘Digging up the same corpse twice is abominable, but it's more painful still watching you try.'

I stood panting next to Blue as the labourer's spade cut the hole square and then went deep, each bite precise and rhythmical and apparently effortless. There was a mesmerising
quality to the man's movements. Only when I looked from the flowing spade-tip to his face did I see that he was weeping.

I rejoined my efforts. Blue dropped to his knees and helped scoop the loose earth from the grave with his good hand. The blackbird's song swelled and the sun tipped colour into the scene: oxblood earth, fir-green hedgerow, salmon sky. The hole stayed a filthy black.

Eventually, I uncovered sacking cloth. I flinched from it at first, then gritted my teeth and, working with Blue, prised the sack free. Together we manhandled it out of the hole and up on to the wet grass. Within minutes Ivan Brook had placed a second sack-covered bundle next to the first. He wiped his palms on his trouser legs after putting it down and – I could not help it – I looked back at his sack to see that one end of it appeared to be leaking.

The three of us worked swiftly to exhume the last body. It was in the freshest – and shallowest – grave. When we'd lain it next to the others, I motioned for the labourer to stand aside. He cleaned the tools on the grass, then used them as an excuse to walk back to the hut.

Blue watched him go. The whites of his eyes were yellow; his skin still looked grey. He turned his gaze upon me as I mustered the courage to open the first sack.

‘I'll do it,' he said. Then, as I protested, he continued, ‘Whatever's inside, I've seen worse.'

The mouth of each sack had been roughly stitched with red thread. I shut my eyes and saw snakes. Blue ripped the sacks open and the snakes broke to maggots, dead in the long grass.

I tightened my jaw and stepped forwards.

Three dead women.

The first, here, charred and missing in the middle, so that she looked half-made, inhuman almost, but no, recognisably elbows, the skin heartbreakingly clean just there, and a black hand stretched out, and yes, I knew it, chained ankle to ankle,
manacles
.

The second, here, intact, her eyes shut, peaceful, asleep, but her stomach bloated, and there, the sole of this foot split to the yellow bone, and she was tall, elegant even in death, but there, on this side, her left thigh, just as the child said,
marked
.

And the third, here, her arm an unnatural shape,
double-jointed
or torn from its socket, and the eyes lidless, gone, something moving in the hole, making me look away, to the scarring round the neck, and the torn shin, and I crouched down by that leg see the same mark high on its thigh, yes,
branded
.

I looked to Blue and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say what did you expect? What did I expect? Exactly what I saw.

Three dead black slave women.

Manacles, markings, branded.

The same initials cut into flesh and metal.

W.T.C.