CHAPTER 41
OUT OF THE PAST
“Who this Mountfellon of Chandos Place is I do not know. But he and his house are warded against the supranatural so we must assume he is more than aware of us. Templebane is a surname which The Oversight has encountered in former times,” said The Smith, and spat into the fire. “There were Templebane witchfinders in the fen country.”
Hodge, Mr Sharp, Cook and Sara sat in a half-circle in front of the hearth at the centre of the Red Library. Hodge was grim-faced and visibly unsettled, the hand he rested on Jed’s head at his knee was shaking with some kind of pent-up emotion which the others had all noticed but were studiously not commenting on. Emmet was quietly shuffling the glass shards of mirror from the Murano Cabinet, ordering and rearranging them on a tabletop cleared of books and other manuscripts.
Sara sat closest to the fire but looked wintry cold, her face a green only a few shades paler than her eyes, and from the shivers which sporadically racked her body it was clear that the blanket Cook had wrapped around her was not good for anything other than hiding the stump on the end of her arm.
“Witchfinders,” she said, her voice barely more than a rasp. “Men who made a living encouraging frightened and credulous folk to kill others weaker than themselves for being something that doesn’t even exist.”
“Not like they think it does at any rate,” said Cook. “Not devils and black magic and all that carry-on invented by fat monks and priests to frighten the people into feeding them or giving them more silver.”
“Ordinary people have always known something other than themselves exists just beyond the beyond, but the witchfinders created a travesty of what actually does live on the far side of that threshold to feed off their fear.”
“Do you think they’d be any happier knowing how the world really is?” said Mr Sharp, pointing at a large brass-bound book at the centre of the table behind them. It was as big as a church Bible, but it had a lock and was neatly parcelled with a thick red silk grosgrain ribbon, somewhat like a Christmas present. “Do you think that if they could read The Great and Hidden History of the World that they would sleep any better? There’d be witchfinders and worse on every street corner.”
“Man’s weakness in the face of uncertainty is to harness the powers of the mob by giving it a common enemy, real or imagined,” said Sara, and then coughed so long and hard that Mr Sharp got to his feet and had to be waved back by Cook who gave him a warning look. Sara eventually stopped coughing and looked up at them, her eyes red and watery from the hacking spasm. “That’s one reason we exist: to hold the line.”
Mr Sharp watched her with something like pain in his eyes.
“That’s just it. We ain’t holding the line,” said Hodge in a burst. Perhaps because he said less than the others when in company they tended to listen whenever he did break his silence, and it was clear from his tremoring hand that he had a head of steam built up which needed to get out before he exploded. “We can’t do our job right and that’s a fact. Too few of us running round a city that’s sprouting like ragweed, spreading everywhere. We miss stuff, or when we do spot it there’s too much going on for us to do the right thing in time.”
“Nonsense,” said Cook.
“I wish it was nonsense,” he snarled bitterly. “But it ain’t. It’s something else entirely. It’s a woman in a garret gone clean mad with grief because her little babby’s breath’s been stolen. It’s her feeling his little broken breastbones all jagged and wrong under the soft skin, skin that ain’t hardly even seen sunlight it’s so new to the world. It’s that poor mind-turned woman thinking it must’ve been her that done it, in her sleep or some-like, because she’s alone in the room and she’s got no memory of the thing that did it.”
They all stared at him.
“What happened?” said Mr Sharp.
“What happened was I listened to you and ignored what the Raven was telling me when it showed me them pigeons all dead in their coops. Warning that there was a breath-stealer abroad,” said Hodge.
And with that he told them of the rooftop full of lifeless squabs and how he’d not had time to fully investigate, and then how he’d gone back and looked harder just too late to stop the Alp sucking the breath from the baby and making its escape. He choked as he told them of the horror that greeted him when he and Jed broke down the door and found the distraught mother slumped on the floor with the crushed child in her arms. And then he turned his eyes to Mr Sharp, eyes that were now haunted with what he’d seen and the knowledge that he might have stopped it.
“I’m sorry,” began Mr Sharp. “But I still—”
Hodge shook his head with a bitter grunt.
“No. I ain’t putting this on you, old mate, because what you told me was right. Sensible. Efficient. And I could have ignored what you said. This is a Free Company. But I didn’t. I did what was sensible. And so the babby and the woman’s on me. But the way I see it now is either I’m sworn to protect, or I’m sworn to be sensible and efficient: the two don’t always run hand in hand. And I’m damn sure which oath I took.”
“If there’s a breath-stealer working the town we will find it,” said The Smith.
Hodge shook his head,
“No. I shall find it myself. Jed has the scent of it; we will pick up its trail. And I shall track it above, on or under the ground, and I shall discover it. And then I shall kill it. It’s taken life, and Lore and Law say the punishment must fit the crime.”
It was, in its grim way, an oath, and as such they gave it the space of a moment’s silence to honour it. And then Sara spoke up.
“That we are stretched is no new news. It does not mean this is the end; we have been stretched and yet have prevailed before…”
“No, Sara Falk,” said Hodge, looking pointedly at The Smith. “Hear me out. Way I see it is: this is a day we’ve long known was coming. Letting that magistrate in with the Mountfellon fellow was bad, but it’s not as if we don’t have normal folk in the house often enough without them a-knowing what we do or why we’re here. That’s almost regular. What ain’t normal is the girl smuggling herself into your good offices and then getting in here. And then trying to steal something. And then escaping into the mirrors. And taking your blessed hand with her. That’s a sign. That’s a sign of the time. And the time is come. The Smith knows it. He’s been making lead boxes.”
“That’s a last resort,” spluttered Cook. “We’re not finished yet—”
“People who are finished never know it until it’s too late,” said The Smith. “It is a matter of safety. We seal the valuable, the powerful and the irreplaceable in the chests. And above all, we put the Wildfire in a doublesealed one. And then we put them all beyond reach.”
“And where would that be?” said Cook.
“At the bottom of the Thames. Hidden from all eyes, chained to the riverbed under flowing water. Hide the Discriminator and put the Wildfire under the water,” said The Smith.
“This is hysterical,” said Cook, bridling. “Why it’s—”
“No,” said Sara. “It’s the right thing to do. At the very least we must put them both out of harm’s way.”
“Mr Sharp,” said Cook, turning for support, “tell them this is ridiculous—”
“It is not,” said Mr Sharp. “It pains me to agree with the others, but it may well be necessary.”
“But how will we do this without drawing attention?” said Cook. “It is impossible to move that much without doing so because we must now assume that the house is being watched by ill-wishers at all hours…”
“Come,” said The Smith. “I will show you how.”
They all followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen, Sara leaning heavily on Mr Sharp’s arm as they brought up the rear. The Smith led them into the furthest pantry where they were presented with a wall covered in shelves, all groaning under the weight of glass jars full of preserved fruits and jams.
“No,” said Cook. “We do not open that door.”
Sara put her hand on her arm, stilling her.
“In extremis,” she said. “In extremis we do.”
The Smith reached up and beneath the topmost shelf. There was a metallic click, and then he slid the entire wall out on a hinge, revealing it to be a door into a dark passage.
“Light,” he said, reaching back.
Mr Sharp produced a candle from inside his coat, and snapped his wrist. The candle flamed brightly as he handed it forward.
They followed The Smith down the passage silently, or as silently as a group could be that included someone like Cook who could not keep herself from tutting in disapproval every few steps.
The ceiling above them was smeared with soot from the generations of candles and torches that had preceded them, and the soot was smeared where others had dragged their hands through it. The reason they had done this became apparent as the band of light from The Smith’s candle reached the studded door at the end of the passage. The last fifteen yards or so of the wall were covered in sooty handprints of all shapes and sizes, and beneath each print an initial or a mark had been scratched into the plaster. The unavoidable impression created by all the handprints and initials was of a kind of informal memorial wall.
“Wait,” said Sara, as The Smith was unlocking the door. Her eyes scanned the handprints until she came to a pair at shoulder height, bearing the initials RF and CF. Her hand reached gently towards them.
“No!” said Sharp, pulling her away, but a beat too late.
Her hand touched the smaller handprint and stuck to it.
To the others watching she appeared to go rigid with shock, and her head snapped back as she glinted, the tendons on her neck arching, her eyes wide open and unblinking as the past pent up in the wall slammed into her.
For Sara it was–as ever–as if it hit her in a series of jagged blows.
The tunnel was full of people.
Some walked past with weapons.
Some stopped and smeared their hands on the sooty ceiling.
Their clothes were those of a past generation.
Their faces were grim and determined.
There were women and men.
The women carried blades and pistols too.
They made handprints.
A tow-haired young man, almost a boy, scratched his name with the point of a seaman’s dirk.
A dog barked close by.
A woman stood with her hand in the same place as hers.
Face lit by a shuttered lantern held by a tall man at her side.
A woman with a face very like her own, but with unruly black curls escaping from beneath a sailor’s stocking cap.
The woman seemed to look right into her eyes.
Then she was speaking.
“Goodbye, my strong girl. My brave little one.”
The others who could not see what Sara was seeing saw her choke at this.
The woman smiled and cleared her throat.
“If all goes well, we shall be back before you wake. If mischance befalls us, you will have to be stronger still and take our place in the Hand. Cook and The Smith will guide you and young Jack Sharp has sworn to be your friend and guard you until you are grown into your power. Go easy on him, my child, for he has a wildness in him, and he struggles to master it. You will understand this, for you have a different kind of fierceness in you, and we have seen you learning to control it—”
The past jerked again.
The woman wiped her eyes and smiled bravely.
Tears leaked down Sara’s cheek.
Again the past jerked forward, and she was looking at the woman again but now with the man beside her leaning down and smiling out at her in the warm light of the shuttered lantern. He was speaking, his voice deep and strong.
“—ever befalls us, good or ill, hold this one truth close to your heart, Sara: however much armour you have to put outside you to deal with the world that is coming, you have always been truly and most deeply loved. And whatever they tell you, child, we have always held that in both worlds, natural and supranatural, this one truth holds strongest in the end: love conquers all.”
He kissed the tips of his fingers and held them out to her, and then, just as they nearly touched her, just as the others saw her strain her face forward towards something they could not see—
—the past snuffed out and Sara staggered away from the wall, her hand falling limply to her side.
Her eyes fluttered and she looked confusedly at Cook and Mr Sharp as she whispered hoarsely, “I thought I should draw strength from it. From them. I thought I would…”
And then her eyes rolled back in her head in a dead faint, and she would have dashed her brains out on the cobbles had Mr Sharp not caught her as she crumpled.
The others watched as he scooped her up and carried her away, back towards the light in the kitchen.
The Smith turned and unlocked the door at the end of the passage.
“No good has come of being down here,” said Cook, her eyes still on Sara. “There’s a good reason that door’s been locked since the Disaster.”
“There’s no reason,” said The Smith, stepping into the cellar beyond the door. “No reason other than sentiment. The Disaster happened because of the mirrors, and the Murano Cabinet has been moved to the Red Library. As well say we should not go there!”
Cook still grumbled as she followed him inside to where Jed was already sniffing hopefully round the edge of the wall for any rats that might have chosen to hide there.
It was a bare cellar, with dry brick walls and stone flags. At the far end was a half-flight of steps leading to a double door studded with iron nails.
“There,” said The Smith. “Emmet takes the caskets out through there. It leads to a Thameside culvert, close by Talleyman’s Cut.”
“I didn’t know there was another tunnel,” said Cook.
“Well, all the more reason not to let superstition and sentiment cloud your naturally enquiring mind,” smiled The Smith. “If you’d come here you would have known.”
Cook harrumphed and looked around.
“Could store my preserves in here,” she allowed. “It’s dry enough.”
The Smith carried on, pointing at the doors.
“From the culvert we put them on a boat and take them midstream up by Blackwall Reach where it’s deepest. Then we sink them. Far as any watchers see, we’ll deliver caskets to the front door by cart, and they’ll be waiting to follow the cart once the caskets come back out.”
Cook looked at Hodge.
“I don’t like it,” she said.
“Don’t have to like it,” he said. “Just have to handle the boat.”
There was a beat of silence as she absorbed the word “boat”. A close observer might have seen a dreamy look pass over her eyes for an unguarded instant.
“Been a while since I was out on the water,” she said.
“But I expect you’ll remember the ropes,” said The Smith. “Once you’ve done it, you never forget. It’s just like riding a horse—”
“Don’t ride horses,” said Cook. “Horrible things. One end kicks and the other bites.”
She shook herself and glared at them.
“I still don’t like this,” she said.
“Nor I,” said Hodge. “Mind, I don’t feel like I’ll like much ever again after that babby’s eyes a-staring at me.”
“I don’t like this either,” said The Smith. “But it needs doing. Sara is dying. Or worse. And without her we lose the Last Hand.”