C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

He found himself wondering what Samuel Perlman must have thought when he first unlocked the door to this room. Or had Perlman already known of his uncle’s peculiar interests before he began searching the house on Fountain Lane?

Sebastian shut the door behind him, then went in search of the aged butler.

With a deliriously excited Campbell once more at his side, he examined the rest of the house, from the attics and dusty, crowded bedrooms down to the kitchen basement. But his search was perfunctory, for he had no real expectation of finding anything.

Men like Daniel Eisler did not give up their secrets easily.

The little girl looked to be eight or nine years old, although she told Hero she would be twelve the week before Christmas. Hero was beginning to realize that she was hopeless when it came to estimating children’s ages.

A plain child named Elsie, she had small, unremarkable features and a habit of frowning thoughtfully before she answered each of Hero’s questions. Her nondescript hair was braided inexpertly into two plats that stuck out at odd angles from her head, while her faded navy frock was hopelessly tattered, with large, triangular rents that someone had tried to repair with big, crooked stitches. But her face was surprisingly clean, and she wore a cotton bonnet tied around her neck with ribbons. She’d pushed the bonnet off her head, so that it bounced about her shoulders every time she dropped a curtsy-which was often.

“I been sweepin’ nine months now, m’lady,” she told Hero with one of her bobbing curtsies. “Me mother died last year, you see. She used to bring in money making lace, and now she’s gone, me da can’t make enough to keep us.” She nodded to the two small children, a boy of about three and a girl of perhaps five, who sat on the steps behind her playing with a pile of oyster shells. “I gots t’ bring the little ones with me when I sweeps, which scares me, ’cause I’m always afraid they’re gonna run out in front of a carriage when me back is turned.”

Hero watched a stylish barouche drawn by a team of high-stepping bays dash up the street and knew an echo of the little girl’s fear. Children were always being run over and killed in the streets of London. She cleared her throat. “What does your father do?”

Elsie dropped another of her little curtsies. “He’s a cutler, m’lady. But the work’s been slow lately. Real slow.”

“And was it his idea that you take up sweeping?”

“Oh, no, m’lady. I got the idea all by meself. At first I tried singing songs. I could get four or five pence a day for singing-even more on Saturday nights at the market.”

“So why did you give that up?”

“I only knows a few songs, and I guess people got tired of hearing ’em, because after a while, I wasn’t makin’ much at all. If I could read, I could buy some new ballads and sing ’em, but I ain’t never been able t’ go t’ school on account of having to watch the children.”

“Would you like to go to school?”

A wistful look came over the child’s small, plain features. “Oh, yes, m’lady. Ever so much.”

Hero blinked and looked down at her notebook. “And how much do you make sweeping at your crossing?”

“Usually I takes in between six and eight pence. But I can’t come in really wet weather, on account o’ the little ones.” Another carriage was rumbling down the street toward them, and Elsie cast a quick, anxious glance at her siblings.

“How long do you find your broom lasts?”

“A week, usually. I don’t sweep in dry weather. The take is always bad on those days, you know. So when it’s dry, I go back to singing.”

“That’s very clever of you,” said Hero, impressed. All the boys to whom she’d spoken had also complained about the poor “take” in dry weather. But Elsie was the first crossing sweep she’d found who thought to do something else on those days. “What time do you usually come to work?”

“Well, I try to get here before eight in the morning, so’s I can sweep the crossing before the carriages and carts get thick. They scares me. I always try to stand back when I see one coming.”

“And how late do you stay?”

Elsie frowned thoughtfully. “This time o’ year, usually till four or five. Me da wants me home before it starts gettin’ real dark. So I can’t stay out late like the boys.”

“Who gives you more money? The ladies or the gentlemen?”

“Oh, the gentlemen almost always gives me more than the ladies. But there’s an old woman what keeps a beer shop, just over there.” She nodded across the narrow street. “She gives me a hunk o’ bread and cheese every day for tea, and I shares it with the children.”

Hero checked her list of possible questions. “What do you see yourself doing in ten years’ time? Do you think you’ll always be a crossing sweeper?”

“I hope not.” Elsie glanced back at the two children now following the progress of a bug along the steps. “Once Mick and Jessup gets big enough to look after themselves, maybe I could get a situation as a servant in a house. I’d work hard-truly, I would. Only, you can’t get a situation without proper clothes, so I don’t know how that’ll ever come to pass.” She smoothed one anxious hand down over her tattered skirt.

Hero smiled. “Did you mend your dress yourself?”

“No, m’lady. Me da did that. He braids me hair every morning too, b’fore he goes out lookin’ for work.”

Simple words, thought Hero. But they transformed the unknown father from some unfeeling monster who sent his little girl out to sweep the streets into an impoverished man doing the best he could to care for his young children without a wife. She pressed a guinea into the girl’s small hand. “Here. Get yourself and the children something to eat, then go home for the day.”

The little girl’s nearly lashless eyes grew round with wonder, and she dropped another of her bobbing little curtsies. “Oh, thank you, m’lady.”

Hero was watching the children run off, hand in hand, when a frisson of awareness passed over her.

She turned her head to find Devlin walking toward her, the fitful afternoon sun warm on his lean, handsome face, his movements languid and graceful and sensuously beautiful. And it struck her that there was something so deliciously wicked about a woman enjoying the mere sight of her husband in broad daylight that the Society for the Suppression of Vice would probably outlaw it, if they could.

“You can’t save them all, you know,” he said, coming to stand beside her, his gaze on the running children. “There’s too many of them.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

“I was watching you. It’s written all over your face.”

“Ah. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the baby that’s turning me into such a maudlin sentimentalist. Whatever you do, don’t tell Jarvis. He’d be scandalized.”

Devlin laughed out loud. “Your secret is safe with me.”

They turned to walk toward her waiting carriage. “Were you looking for me for some reason in particular?”

“I was. I’ve something I’d like to show your Miss Abigail McBean. Care to introduce me to her?”

“Of course. What is it? Another manuscript?”

He shook his head. “Something that I suspect is far more sinister.”

“It’s called a magic circle,” said Abigail McBean, holding the unrolled vellum with hands that were not quite steady. Sebastian and Hero were seated in Abigail’s crowded little morning room, with its towering shelves overflowing with manuscripts and learned texts on magic, alchemy, and witchcraft. “Where did you get this?”

Devlin said, “I found it along with a number of others in a chest in Daniel Eisler’s house.”