Anne Perry - A Christmas Odyssey

Two old men engaged in disjointed conversation, then became lost, as if the ideas behind it escaped them into the fog.

Crow knew the reasons. He knew that those who drank to oblivion seldom ate. Their bellies were bloated, and yet they were starving. Perhaps that was the core of it all: their dreams and their senses were frantically consuming but never fed.

Then in all the babble and moaning someone mentioned Lucien’s name. Crow spun around. An old woman with unnaturally bright hennaed hair was telling Henry very clearly that she had seen Lucien, only two days ago.

“Pretty, ’e were, an’ gentle spoke,” she said with a toothless grin. “Twenty years ago, in me prime, I’d ’ave ’ad ’im.”

Crow thought her prime was more like forty years ago, or even fifty, but he did not interrupt.

“Who was he with?” Henry asked her patiently.

“Another pretty feller,” she replied. “But got a nasty eye. Looked at yer like rats, ’e did. Ol’ Roberts ’ates rats. Breaks their necks if he catches ’em.” She held up both her hands and twisted them sharply, as if she were wringing the water out of laundry. She made a clicking sound with her tongue, to imitate the breaking of bone.

“Were they friends, these two?” Henry asked her with as much patience as he could manage.

“Nobody’s friends.” She looked at him witheringly. “Particular these two weren’t. After the same bint ter lie with, weren’t they!”

“Sadie,” he guessed.

“Mebbe. Long-legged piece, with black ’air.”

“Where will I find them?” He was blunt at last.

She cackled with laughter.

“Where will I find them?” he repeated, with an edge of annoyance.

She blinked. “Wot?”

“Where are they, yer stupid mare?” Squeaky interrupted angrily.

She turned to him, her eyes suddenly focusing. “Go an’ ask Shadow Man,” she hissed. “See if ’e’ll tell yer. Go an’ get ’is soul back fer ’im.”

There was a moment’s silence. One or two people close to them pulled back a step or two.

“Who is Shadow Man?” Henry asked.

“Shadwell, ’is name is. The devil, I call ’im.” She stared at him, then her face seemed to contort into a kind of convulsion, and she started to shiver violently.

Henry turned to Crow. “Can you help her, man? She’s having some kind of a fit. Can’t you …” His voice trailed off.

“No one can help her,” Crow answered. “Her demons are inside her own head. Come on. We’ve one more place to try tonight. It’s not far from here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Had enough?” Crow looked at him with some sympathy.

Henry lifted his chin a little. “No. If we’ve more to try, then we’ll try them. Word is bound to spread. How much deeper is there to go?”

“There are tunnels under the river,” Squeaky answered. “Old ones, before they rebuilt the sewers. Believe me, we’re not at the bottom yet. Although the real bottom may be up a bit from there.”

Henry stared at him, confused.

“There’s a bottom of despair,” Squeaky replied. “And a bottom of power, an’ cruelty. We haven’t even touched the places where people do things to each other like some of those paintings by that German feller, or Dutch he was maybe. Pictures of torture, an’ things with animals you wouldn’t even think of.”

“Lucien wouldn’t …” Henry began, then stopped. “Or perhaps he would. As you said, the real demons are in your own mind. If they conquer, perhaps anything of other people’s pain may be illusory to you.”

Squeaky was not certain what he meant. The demons he knew were real enough: cold, hunger, disease, fear, and even at times loneliness. That wasn’t illusory.

“Who’s this Shadwell?” Crow asked, looking at each of them in turn. “Do you think that’s just the drink talking in her?”

“No,” Bessie interrupted them for the first time, shaking her head violently. “ ’E’s real.”

“Have you seen him?” Henry asked her.

She put her hands up to her face, her eyes wide with fear. “No! I don’t look. But I ’eard. ’Is voice is soft, like ’e got summink in ’is throat an’ ’e can’t speak proper. But you can ’ear ’im anyway.”

Squeaky looked sideways at her. “Yer sure you ain’t making that up?”

“Course I’m sure! ’E’s real! I’ll show yer where ’e’s bin, but I won’t take yer there.” She put out her hand, and—cursing himself again—he took it.

She led them through freezing alleys. The steady dripping of eaves left long icicles hanging like glittering daggers above them in the sporadic lamplight. The air was bitter with the acrid smell of old chimneys and open drains.

They turned into a tiny square and through an archway into a whorehouse. The madame eyed them grimly.

“I apologize,” Henry said hastily. “We appear to be lost.”

The woman let out a gale of laughter, and belched from the depths of her huge stomach. “Yer got no money, get out. That way!” She jabbed her fingers to the left.

They escaped obediently down steps, along a somber passage and up again into a noisy hall that was apparently the entrance to a very large house. It was initially quiet, except for a sudden shout that made them all start and then move closer together, as if in the face of some unseen threat.

A man appeared in the doorway, leaning on a stick to support himself. He was Squeaky’s height, but skeletally thin. His face was pale, as if it were painted with white lead, and his eyes were odd colors, one lighter than the other, and both ringed with black. He was dressed in old-fashioned breeches to the knee and a velvet frock coat, all in a faded lavender. He could have stepped out of a previous century. He surveyed them.

“Nothing for you here,” he said, pronouncing his words with pedantic care. “Trying to get lost, are you?” He addressed the question to Henry Rathbone.

“We are looking for a friend,” Henry replied, matching courtesy for courtesy. “We think he may have come this way, and perhaps you have seen him?”

“I see everyone, my dear.” The man took a step closer, and Squeaky was aware of a draft of cold air in the room. “Sooner or later,” the man added with a twitch of his lips that was not quite a smile. “What does your friend look like?”

“In his early thirties, dark-haired, slender, unusually handsome.” Henry struggled to think of something unique about Lucien. “His eyes are actually dark hazel, not brown, and he speaks with a slightly husky voice.” Was he making a fool of himself, by being so detailed? What would this odd-looking man notice about anyone else’s appearance?

“Oh, yes,” the man said with a sigh as if some deep emotion filled him. “He came this way, with Sadie, of course, with dear, fickle, dangerous Sadie. Such fun, on her good days. Or perhaps one should say ‘nights.’ Cruel sometimes, but then aren’t we all?” He looked directly at Bessie, who shivered and stepped backward, closer to Squeaky.

Without thinking, Squeaky put his arm around her, and then wondered what on earth he was doing. He was going soft! His emotions were rotting along with his wits.

“Where can we find them?” Henry asked, still facing the man in his absurd lavender velvet. Squeaky marveled at his persistence. If he was afraid, there was nothing of it in his face, his calm blue eyes. Only looking at his hands did he see that they were stiff, as though he had to concentrate to keep them hanging at his sides, apparently casually. What a strange man he was, completely incomprehensible. Squeaky wanted to despise him—and yet he found that he could not.

This whole adventure was a very bad idea. He should have had more sense, and sent Henry Rathbone and his dreams on his way. That would have been best for everyone—even this spoiled, self-indulgent young man in his descent to hell. Let him go, if that was what he wanted. He wasn’t coming back; anyone but a fool knew that.