‘We won’t be disturbed here, doctor, sir...’
‘Jack,’ I muttered.
‘Jack,’ she said, pleased with the sound. ‘A good name.’
She tugged her skirts up over her stocking-tops, and tied them around her waist, settling down on the ground, positioning herself to receive me. Her face was exactly Lucy’s. Exactly. I looked at her for a long moment, hearing Lucy’s invitation. I became painfully engorged. Finally, it was too much for me and, greatly excited and aroused, I fell upon the harlot, opening my clothes, and spearing her cleanly. In the lea of Lucy’s tomb, I rutted with the creature, tears on my face, a dreadful burning inside. Her flesh was cool and white. She coaxed me to spend, helping me almost as a nursing mother helps a child. Afterwards, she took me wetly into her mouth and – with exquisite, torturous care – bled me slightly. It was stranger than morphine, a taste of rainbow death. Over in seconds, the act of vampire communion seemed in mind to stretch on for hours. I could almost wish that my life would drain away with my seed.
As I buttoned myself up, she looked elsewhere, almost modestly. I sensed the power she now had over me, the power of fascination a vampire has over its victim. I offered her coin, but my blood was enough. She looked at me with tenderness, almost with pity, before she left. If only I had had my scalpel.
Before making this entry, I conferred with Geneviève and Druitt. They are to take the night shift. We have become an unofficial infirmary and I want Geneviève – who, though formally unqualified, is as fine a general practitioner of medicine as I could wish – to be here while I am out. She is particularly concerned with the Mylett child, Lily. I fear Lily cannot last out the weekend.
The journey back from Kingstead is a blur. I remember sitting in an omnibus, lolling with the movement of the vehicle, my vision focusing and unfocusing. In the Korea, Quincey got me, in the spirit of experiment, to smoke a pipe of opium. This sensation was similar, but much more sensual. Every woman I chanced to see, from skipping golden-haired children to ancient nurses, I desired in a vague, unspecifiable manner. I would have been too spent to act upon my desires, I think, but they still tormented me, like tinily ravenous ants crawling on my skin.
Now, I am jittery, nervous. The morphine has helped, but not much. It has been too long since I last delivered. Whitechapel has become dangerous. There have been people snooping around all the time, seeing Silver Knife in every shadow. My scalpel is on my desk, shining silver. Sharp as a whisper. They say that I am mad. They do not understand my purpose.
Returning from Kingstead, in the midst of my haze, I admitted something to myself. When I dream of Lucy, it is not of her as she was when warm, when I loved her. I dream of Lucy as a vampire.
It is nearly midnight. I must go out.
22
GOOD-BYE, LITTLE YELLOW BIRD
The director had left her in charge of the night shift, which put Montague Druitt in a black mood. When Geneviève wanted to stay by Lily’s bedside, Druitt harrumphed about the inconvenience, unsubtly indicating she should delegate the general authority if she wished to devote herself to this specific case. In the small downstairs room where the child’s cot was, Geneviève dispensed instructions. Druitt stood at his ease, and affected not to notice the sawing of Lily’s lungs. Long, agonising down-cut rasps came with every exhalation. Amworth, the newly-engaged nurse, fussed around the patient, rearranging the blankets.
‘I want you or Morrison in the foyer at all times,’ she told him. ‘The last few nights, there has been a stream of people coming through. I don’t want anyone in who has no business here.’
Druitt’s brow wrinkled. ‘You perplex me. Surely, we are for all...’
‘Of course, Mr Druitt. However there are those who would exploit us. We have medicines, other items of value. Thefts have been heard of. Also, should a tall Chinese gentleman present himself, I would be grateful if you could refuse him admission.’
He did not understand; she hoped he would not be made to. She did not really think the man could keep the hopping creature out when it resumed its persecution of her. The elder was yet another of the problems pressing around her, jostling for solutions.
‘Very well,’ Druitt said, and left. She noticed his one good coat was trailing strands along the bottom, and was almost through at the elbows. With these people, good clothes were armour. They separated the genteel from the abyss. Montague John Druitt, she thought, had more than a passing acquaintance with the depths. He was polite to Geneviève but something behind his reserve worried her. He had been a schoolmaster, then half-heartedly embarked on a law career, before coming to Toynbee Hall. He had achieved no distinction in any of his chosen professions. His special project was the raising of public subscriptions to fund a Whitechapel Cricket Club. He would run the side, recruiting likely players from the street, instilling in them the values and skills of the game he, not alone of his countrymen, regarded as almost a religion.
Lily began coughing up a red-black substance. The new nurse – a vampire with some experience – wiped clean the child’s mouth, and pressed on her chest, trying to get the blockage cleared.
‘Mrs Amworth? What is it?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘The bloodline, ma’m,’ she said. ‘Nothing much we can do about it.’
Lily was dying. One of the warm nurses had given a little blood but it was no use. The animal she had tried to become was taking over, and that animal was dead. Living tissue was transforming inch by inch into leathery dead flesh.
‘It’s a trick of the mind,’ Amworth said. ‘Shape-shifting. To become another thing you must be able to imagine that other thing down to the smallest detail. It’s like making a drawing: you have to get every little working thing right. The raw ability is in the bloodline, but the knack doesn’t come easy.’
Geneviève was glad that those of the bloodline of Chandagnac could not shape-shift. Amworth smoothed Lily’s wing like a blanket. Geneviève saw the disproportionate growth as a child’s crayon drawing, bending the wrong way, not fitting together. Lily yelled, a stabbing pain inside her. She had gone blind on the streets, the sun burning out her new-born’s eyes. The dead wing was leeching substance out of the bones of her legs, which crumbled and cracked in their sheaths of muscle. Amworth had put on splints, but that was just a delaying action.
‘It would be a mercy,’ Amworth said, ‘to ease her passing.’
Sighing, Geneviève agreed. ‘We should have a Silver Knife of our own.’
‘Silver Knife?’
‘Like the murderer, Mrs Amworth.’
‘I heard this evening from one of the reporters that he has sent a letter to the newspapers. He wants to be called Jack the Ripper, he says.’
‘Jack the Ripper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Silly name. No one will ever remember it. Silver Knife he was, and Silver Knife he’ll always be.’
Amworth stood up and brushed off the knees of her long apron. The floor in the room was unswept. It was a constant struggle to keep dirt out of the Hall. It had not been meant for a hospital.
‘There’s nothing more to be done, ma’m. I must see to the others. I think we can save the Chelvedale boy’s eye.’
‘You go, I’ll stay with her. Someone has to.’
‘Yes ma’m.’
The nurse left and Geneviève took her place, kneeling by the cot. She took Lily’s human hand and gripped tight. There was still un-dead strength in the child’s fingers, and she responded. Geneviève talked to the girl softly, reverting to languages Lily could not possibly understand. Nestling in the back of her skull was a Medieval French mind that broke through sometimes.