Jane Steele(33)

“Yes.” I stepped back, passing an arm around Clarke’s horridly small waist. “I can, I promise.”

Nick had already snapped the jangling reins and pulled away—a man who lived not much better than his horse did. Meanwhile, I knew precisely which vice he was warning me against, and in starker detail than he might have imagined; words like virtue and chastity and fallen were lobbed over our heads like so many shuttlecocks at Lowan Bridge, but I had read Mr. Munt’s “love letters,” and so understood the mechanics of the practice.

Some form of employment had to be found, and at once, for when I caught Clarke’s bright green eye and thought of all which could befall her—rough hands against her freckled shoulders, chapped lips at her slim throat—a swell of disgust rose. Becky Clarke, in a way which had not been true since my mother’s sad, soft-edged smile and her cool hand against my cheek, belonged to me.

“First, a celebratory breakfast,” I decided. “The man across the street with the sign for hot ham sandwiches—doesn’t he seem like an expert toaster of cheese and meat?”

“Indeed. And after eating the best ham sandwiches in all of London?”

I lifted my luggage as the smile faded from my face, willing myself not to say, I haven’t the faintest idea.

? ? ?

Dark days followed, and far darker nights.

After inquiring after lodgings, all priced too dear, we passed the night in the back room of a public house, Clarke’s flaxen hair mingling with the straw strewn across our shared pillow. We passed a night in the spare room of a cottage outside town when we retreated; but we could think of no employment thereabouts and returned to the city. We passed a night hemorrhaging precious funds upon a cheap hotel, knowing we had no means of replacing the currency. We passed a night propped one against the other on an empty crate, dozing fitfully, until a peeler arrived to tidy the red-brick alleyways he imagined belonged to him.

Sssshriiiek! cried his whistle, and off Clarke and I went like arrows from a bow, both knowing that we could not live this way for long.

For five days we wandered, growing steadily, silently despairing, washing our faces with rainwater trapped in old cisterns and weathered statuary. We were not wretched, nor were we rich. We simply did not appear to be trustworthy—we were blue dirt, green clouds—nothing about us made sense. Over and over, we crossed the fat, sombre river seeking new neighbourhoods, but all were either putrid hovels with mutton bones scattered about for the snarling dogs or else brick buildings with maniacally pristine windowpanes, and both frightened us. If approaching a cheery town house with a few cracked vases in the window and a ROOMS TO LET sign, we were turned away for want of references. Should we broach a wreck reeking of sewage and solitude, we would be sent packing on suspicion of thievery (which was, I own, a fair criticism).

“It isn’t like I thought,” Clarke said.

We had crossed London Bridge again, and I believe now that we were in Southwark, for though the street names blurred feverishly, I recall the thick sparks and steam and soot of the train station and the tooth-jarring clatter of the engines. Having located a squat public house with dull brass fixtures, we had stopped for a pot of tea, and were now loath to leave the place, instead having rested upon an empty wine barrel in the alley behind, the remains of trampled lettuce surrounding us.

“It isn’t like I thought either. There’s so . . .”

“So much of it,” Clarke sighed.

Her skeletal arm slid off my waist when I stood. “You rest here—you look positively done and I’ve a lucky feeling. I’ll be back directly.”

Clarke wanted to believe me and did not, which hurt horribly; she watched me quit the corridor.

“Don’t leave me.” For the first time, she sounded frightened. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

“Never,” I called back.

I meant it, but which direction was I to take? Clarke and I were educated innocents, a condition resembling stupid clerks or intelligent kitchen slaveys, which is to say useless. Cognisant we would be desperate enough to sell practically anything unless we found regular employment, and terrified of watching the small nest egg I had stolen crack and dribble away, I ploughed through piles of mismatched boots and discarded nut husks, knowing that I had never yet failed to find an opportunity when I set my mind to it and still at age sixteen foolish enough to trust myself.

My stomach was empty, my mind echoing its cavernous snarl. The twisting streets with the brown water trickling between the stones led me farther from Clarke, and it occurred to me then that, were I a good person, I should leave her. Becky Clarke would live better without the hindrances of my demons and my doubts. Surely, were I to vanish, she would return to her parents, and surely being ignored was preferable to being penniless? Kicking through clamshells as I neared the great sluggish foul river, I hesitated.

Do I love Clarke enough to say good-bye to her?

I did not, I realised.

Then I heard a strange voice calling out.

“Most ’orrible and beastly murder done! Most haudacious and black crime committed!”

A man of middle age stood with a sheaf of yellow papers, crying out the latest atrocities. He was bent over—I hesitated to call him hunchbacked, but he flirted with the appellation—a heavy, downward-leaning human whom I could imagine tracking rabbits like a bloodhound. He owned a bloodhound’s jaw too, a great slab on either side of his face framing his crooked teeth with fleshy drapery. His hair was russet and his eyes a hard yellowish hazel like petrified wood.