“And Fiona?”
“Yes?”
“Nevil Hammersmith has the longest eyelashes I have ever seen on a man. Have you told him how you think about him?”
Fiona nearly dropped the water pail. She hunched her shoulders and the water sloshed about, but none of it spilled.
“Good night, Claire,” she said.
“Good night.”
Fiona stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind her, and let out a huge sigh. Then she went looking for a place to dump the dirty water.
17
After a long walk underground, Jack and Cinderhouse came up to the surface inside a small obelisk at the corner of the St John of God cemetery. The door that was set back in the obelisk was ancient oak banded with iron, and the hinges squeaked and stuck. They were only able to open it halfway, and they squeezed through the crack into the grey predawn. There was not a person in sight in any direction they looked. The sky was overcast and there was a cool spring breeze blowing through the grass and along the tops of the tombstones.
Jack swayed in the wind. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, bringing in the fresh moist air and blowing out the dust and blood that had filled his nostrils for so long. He felt the wind brush against his bare testicles and he opened his eyes. He gave Cinderhouse a quick glance, just to make sure he was still there, then walked away through the stones, letting the grass poke up between his toes and the first few drops of rain spatter against his face. His legs gave way and he fell and tumbled until he fetched up against the side of a stone. He looked up at the name engraved in the front of the stone, but he didn’t recognize it. It was not the name of anyone he had touched, and so he felt a mild disappointment. He knew that the odds were against the body under him being one of his own, but the entire day had felt so much like it belonged to him that he had half expected it to be a familiar corpse. It was his birthday all over again and everything ought to be his.
From that prone position, he looked around at the sea of stones and wondered at the number of graveyards in London, so many of them filled with people he had not managed to transform before they met their ends in other ways, at other hands. He silently apologized to them all for being so slow in his work. He wondered what would happen as the city continued to grow and lap over its current boundaries. Would the bodies beneath him be plowed into the soil and homes built atop their bones? Or would they sink farther under and join the forgotten dead in the catacombs beneath?
When he had caught his breath, he pulled himself up and staggered over to where Cinderhouse still stood in the shadow of the obelisk. He took the bald man by the arm and leaned against him and allowed himself to be led across the graveyard to Cambridge Street. They were somewhere in Agar Town, he knew. Not the best area to be caught out after dark. Jack had come up far from his old stomping grounds and even farther from his home. He imagined his landlady would have given up on him by now. She wouldn’t wait more than a few weeks to decide he wasn’t coming back. Perhaps she thought he was dead. No matter. Whatever she thought, she would have cleaned the place out and found someone new to pay the rent. His things would have been donated or put out in the street. There were no relatives to claim them. His old life was gone and there was no going back.
But he was content to be alive and aboveground and free.
“Forward,” he said, “into the future. On with a brand-new life.”
The bald man gave him a puzzled look, but said nothing, which was a relief. Jack didn’t like the man’s voice. It was high and reedy and grated on his nerves.
Jack heard running water and he pulled Cinderhouse across the street, to where they could see down past the towpath to the black surface of Regent’s Canal. The early-morning air was wet and clung to them like gossamer. Jack felt a cool mist on his face, but did not know whether it came up from the canal or down from the heavy grey sky.
In the predawn hour there was little traffic, but Jack knew that carriages would choke the street as soon as the first signs of approaching daylight began to show on the horizon. They needed to find a place to hide before the sun came up. And something to wear. There was no way they could pass unnoticed in the city without proper clothing.
He turned his back on the canal and Cinderhouse mirrored him, turning when he did, doing as he did, unless instructed otherwise. He appreciated how quick the bald man was to follow his orders.
A dog trotted by on the other side of the street, then stopped and looked at the two men. It wagged its tail hopefully and altered its course, heading slowly toward them, perhaps in search of food, but too wild to come directly to them. It circled, its ears laid back but its tail limply moving back and forth. Jack frowned and squinted down the length of the street to where a splinter of darkness had peeled away from the purple sky and was moving steadily toward them, growing as it came, fashioning itself into the shape of a large black omnibus, four horses out front, chuffing away toward the day’s first destination. Behind the bus came a wave of water pouring from the sky in a solid sheet, advancing as if pulled along by the steady horses, as if they were a harbinger of the weather. Thor’s chariot.
The dog, wild and stupid, thin and hungry, almost as thin as Jack, advanced toward the two men, unaware of the bus. Perhaps it was deaf, or perhaps the sound of the rain masked the rumbling of the wheels. Jack felt his heart begin to beat faster in anticipation. He felt Cinderhouse tense next to him.
The horses clopped past the two men. There was a solid thunk and a sharp yip of pain, and then the rain poured down and the bus disappeared into the grey, headed somewhere on the other side of the canal. Rain drove down and splashed up and settled down again in waves, running off the sides of the towpath and joining the black water below.
Jack stepped out into the street and looked for the dog. He found a spatter of blood, already being washed away, and a trail. He followed the red swath, which led him to a small pile of organs, a rope of intestines replacing the blood trail. Soon he found the dog itself, weak now and stopped by the curb on the other side of Cambridge Street, unable to step up out of the lane. It had pulled itself into a tiny bundle, shivering in the rain, ripped apart by the callous horses, by the wheels of the black bus. It looked up at Jack, and he knelt beside it on the bloody stones. He put out his hand and touched the dog’s snout. The tip of its tongue extended far enough to lick his fingers.
“We should put it out of its misery,” Cinderhouse said. “Show some mercy.”
Jack looked up, surprised to hear the bald man speak. He had not heard Cinderhouse follow him, had barely heard his voice over the sound of the rain.
“‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’” Jack said. “‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.’”
“But it is raining.”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” God, but the fly was a stupid creature. His company was quickly becoming tedious. “I mean to say that you cannot ask me to show mercy. It must be freely given or it means nothing.”
“I’ll do it then. The poor thing.”
Jack motioned for Cinderhouse to move back and he looked down at the dog again. It was panting and whining, staring up at Jack, its insides painted across the curb, blood welling from its ear. Jack smiled at it and ran the tips of his fingers over its wet muzzle again.