Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(84)

‘What’s this?’ screeched Lesley.

‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, rather too quietly.

‘God spare me from fools and amateurs,’ said Lesley under her breath, then louder. ‘What’s this?’

‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, and this time I felt it carry out to the audience. I got a ripple of vestigia back, not from the people but from the fabric of the auditorium. The theatre remembered Jack Ketch, executioner for Charles II, a man famed for being so unrepentantly crap at his job that he once published a pamphlet in which he blamed his victim, Lord Russell, for failing to stay still when he swung the axe. For a century afterwards, Ketch was a synonym for the hangman, the murderer and the Devil himself: if ever there was a name to conjure him with, then it would be Jack Ketch. Which explained his role in the Punch and Judy show, and why this was my best chance to get close enough to Lesley to use the syrette.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Ketch, but I am quite comfortable here,’ said Lesley.

I hadn’t bothered to learn the script by heart, but I knew enough to improvise. ‘But you must come out,’ I said. ‘Come out and be hanged.’

‘You would not be so cruel,’ said Lesley.

I know for a fact that there was supposed to be a load more banter here, but since I couldn’t remember the words I cut to the action. ‘Then I must fetch you,’ I said, and advanced up the stairs to the poop deck. It was hard to make myself look at the ruin of Lesley’s face, but I couldn’t risk any surprise moves. Her Punch face twisted with irritation, presumably because I was skipping lines, but she went on with the show – just as I’d been hoping she would. This was the part where Jack Ketch seizes Punch and drags him to the noose, at which point the wily wife-murderer tricks Jack Ketch into sticking his own head through the loop and thus hanging himself. No sir, they don’t make role models for children like that any more.

I readied the syrette.

Lesley cowered as I approached. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she squeaked. ‘I’ll never do so again.’

‘That much is certain,’ I said, but before I could inject her she whirled and thrust Nightingale’s cane in my face. The muscles in my back and shoulders locked and it was all I could do to keep my balance.

‘Do you know what this is?’ asked Lesley, waving the cane from side to side.

I tried to say ‘it’s a stick’, but my jaw muscles were locked along with everything else.

‘As Prospero had his book and staff,’ said Lesley, ‘so does your Master have both those things, but of those I need only the staff. Being of the spirit world gives one a certain je ne sais quoi when dealing with magic, but what one lacks sans corporality is the spark of vitality necessary to facilitate one’s desires.’

Which at least confirmed that Henry Pyke had no intrinsic magic of his own, an observation I’d have found more interesting if I hadn’t been sodding paralysed and at his mercy.

‘This is the source of your Master’s power,’ said Lesley. ‘And with his power I can do, well, just about anything I please.’ She grinned, showing her smashed teeth. ‘Your line is: “Now, Mr Punch, no more delay”.’

‘Now, Mr Punch, no more delay,’ I said, and gestured at the noose. ‘Put your head through this loop.’ The weird thing was, this time I could sense the compulsion almost as if it was a forma, a shape in my mind but not of my mind.

‘Through there,’ said Lesley, winking at the audience. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Aye, through there,’ I said. I sensed it again, and this time I was sure: the idea of the shape was external but the actual shape itself was being formed by my own mind. It was like hypnotism, a suggestion rather than a command.

‘What for? I don’t know how,’ said Lesley, and struck a pose of deep despair.

‘It’s very easy,’ I said, grasping the noose, the rope scratchy against my palms. ‘Only put your head through here.’

Lesley leaned forward and, missing the noose entirely, asked, ‘What, so?’

‘No, no,’ I said, and pointed at the noose. ‘Here.’ If it was a suggestion, I thought, then I should be able just to think it away.

Lesley theatrically missed, sticking her head through the noose once more. ‘So, then?’ she asked.

I tried to push the shape out of my mind but found myself saying, ‘Not so, you fool,’ and pantomiming exasperation. Brute force wasn’t the way, and I was going to have to come up with something because in less than two lines the character of Jack Ketch was due to stick his own stupid neck through the loop and get himself hanged, and me with him.

‘Mind who you call fool; try and see if you can do it yourself,’ squeaked Lesley, and paused to give the audience a chance to titter in anticipation. ‘Only show me how and I will do it directly.’

I felt my body shift in anticipation of the move that would shove my head into the noose. Which is when I thought that if I couldn’t get rid of the compulsion, maybe I could change it enough to break it. I did it like anti-noise, where you cancel out a sound wave by broadcasting another sound wave with an inverted phase – it’s clever stuff and very counter-intuitive, but it works. I was hoping the weird, inside-my-head version would work because I’d only just started making the shape in my mind when my mouth said, ‘Very well, I will.’