The Naming of the Birds, page 20
“Do you think he’ll—” He stopped himself. His thoughts were clearing now. “Yes, of course he will.”
“Probably, yes. But he has to answer to them, whoever they are. They’ll want to know what we knew. We have to tell him something, something he’ll believe.”
“But we can’t. If he—if the worst happens, if he—if we’re gone. They’ll destroy everything, every trace. No one will ever know.”
“No, of course we can’t. I said something he’ll believe, not the truth. He already knows who you are, and knowing Scotland Yard, he’s probably well enough informed. You said someone approached you and the inspector, someone from Special Branch?”
This took a moment. “Special Branch? Yes. Yes. The East India Club. Manning, was it? No, Massey. Said we could help each other. Said the murderer is a threat to the realm.”
Octavia managed a bitter smile. “Yes, I’m sure. Someone’s realm, anyway. Tell Blakelock that, then. That you’ve taken the hint from Special Branch, and you’re working to protect the realm. Not too readily, but tell him. And I’ll tell him just enough of the truth. I’m an archivist, so I’m helping you. But all I know is that I’m helping you to find someone dangerous. It’s not perfect, but it might hold up for a while.” She glanced again towards the back of the house. “I think that’s him. Close your eyes again. Pretend you haven’t come around yet.”
Gideon shook his head, provoking another vivid bloom of pain. “No, I want him to start with me. You needn’t … he knows who I am, and you needn’t … we shouldn’t have brought you here, and I don’t want to see you—”
“Gideon, shush. That’s sweet, but I’m the one who brought us here and I don’t have any use for gallantry just now. Quickly, or he’ll know we’ve been talking. Do it now.”
It wasn’t a relief, closing his eyes. It felt shameful, and in the dark there was nothing but the pain, nothing but the helplessness. Letting himself slump in the chair, he found there was nothing to relieve the strain of his bonds. His ankles were hooked around the chair legs and lashed from above, so that the ropes bit deeper as his weight settled, and the chafing had already broken the skin. His wrists were cinched together somewhere below the small of his back. They had been tied with his palms facing outwards, no doubt to worsen the discomfort. Those cords had rasped against the tender skin of his wrists. He felt blood beading and slinking among the fissures of his palms, finding the easiest course.
He heard something in the next room. It was a kitchen, maybe, with a door to the garden. Something was set down. He heard the ponderous scrape of iron against stone, a vacant clang. Then Gideon understood. A barrow, a wheelbarrow. The body.
Blakelock busied himself a little longer. His boot heels knocked and scuffed. A washbowl was filled and sloshed, some bottle or jar unstopped. He took a noisy draught of something, water or ale, and afterwards he gave a sated gasp. He fell silent, and Gideon understood then these were sounds he expected them to hear. Was he scratching himself idly now, as he contemplated what was next? Was he fingering one of his coarse implements?
And would he even bother to interrogate them? Was there anything more that he and his masters truly needed to know? Perhaps it made no difference. Gideon would do his part, if he could, and maybe Milo really was somewhere close by. Either way, there would be more pain. Either way, it might come to the same thing. He would not hear the scrape of the barrow then. There would be no more pretending.
The sound was forced out of him—an unshaped noise, not even a scream—by the suddenness of it. He was in darkness, slumped and unready; then he was shoved and spilled into emptiness. He opened his eyes just soon enough to make sense of it—the walls tipping, the shearing light—then he was slammed against the floor.
He had registered Blakelock’s proximity at the last instant—a peripheral reek, an indrawn breath, a heel squeak—but there had been no time. He made sense of it as Blakelock hauled him upright, pain spearing from his shoulder, and he cursed himself. Blakelock had found him helpless and unseeing. He had tipped his chair over. It was simple and brutal, as everything would be from this moment on. Their daydream of a plan would do no good, and he had done no good in his daydream of a life. It was simple and brutal, and this was how it would end.
“Wakey-wakey, Sergeant Limp.” Blakelock was bent low to Gideon’s face, still gripping the arms of his chair. His breath had a riverine dankness. His clothes smelled of burning, and of something like tallow. “Not that you was really out, mind you. I weren’t born yesterday, boy. I been doing this a good long while.”
He turned to Octavia. “Been scheming while I was away, princess? Eh? Course you have. Tell him this, tell him that. Horrible coarse sort like that, he won’t know no better. That’s what you said, ain’t it? Don’t worry, my feelings ain’t hurt.”
Drawing back, he stood with his feet planted apart and his thumbs hooked in a belt of rough twine. He let his gaze drift between them, his expression at once wistful and hungry. “I’m a bit cross, though, I don’t mind saying. You spoiled my little show good and proper, didn’t you. Here I was making an effort, putting a bit of style into it, and what do I get? I get a lump took out of me with a poker. I get clawed up and smashed in the voice box. Weren’t nice at all. Weren’t what you’d call genteel. Course, you both got taught. Showed you what happens, didn’t I, when you carry on like that?”
“We were afraid,” said Octavia. She spoke more gently than before, as if chastened. She was still trying, still clinging to the daydream. “Afraid for our lives, which I suppose is what you wanted. What did you expect?”
“Listen to her,” said Blakelock, his lip twisting sourly. “All meek and mild now, the same one that came howling at me like a savage. You playing a little game, princess? You reckon I won’t catch on? And you ain’t got that quite right neither. Course you were afraid, and you were right to be, but that weren’t the point. The point was, that was one of ours whose neck I broke. A useful idiot, they used to call him, though I never could work out how he was useful. He was one of ours, but he shit where he et his dinners, didn’t he? All he had to do was mind his little shop. All he had to do was spout off some of his lawbook talk if anyone came sniffing about, give them chapter and verse about binding codicils or whatever the fuck. Do his ah-ing and his that-is-to-say-ing until they went on their way, which they always did, ’cause how long could anyone sit and listen to that twitchy, stammering cunt?
“And what does he up and do, the first time a bird turns up who’s got soft manners and fills out her velvet in the right places? He takes her straight to the crown fucking jewels, that’s what he does. I’ll be straight with you. I ain’t looking forward to telling them about it, them as I work for. They ain’t the sort for making allowances. You know what they’ll say to me, soon as they’re finished tearing strips off me? They’ll say, ‘Blakelock, my lad, this ain’t a happy story. Here we was passing the port around, eyeing up this nice bit of cheese, and you come and tell us a story like that. It’s taken the shine right off our evening,’ they’ll say, ‘and you’re going to have to do your best to cheer us up.’ And you know what I’ll say?”
Blakelock had returned to the table where his tools were laid out. He picked up the blackened pair of tongs. “I’ll say, ‘You’re right, gents. It ain’t a happy story at all, and it pains me to have to tell it. But never mind about that cheese course, sirs. You can get cracking on your nuts with a glad heart.’” He snapped the tongs shut. The sound they made was bluntly distinct. It was simple. “‘You know why? Because this might have been a sad story, but your boy Blakelock made sure it had a happy fucking ending.’”
He put down the tongs and took up the garrote, turning to the window as he drew it taut. Against the light, scabs of dark matter showed on the coarse wire. “You getting the idea now?” he said. “The point ain’t getting lost, is it? Whoever got to them old boys in town knew what they were about, ’cause they weren’t exactly easy pickings. But they weren’t the worst of the bunch, let me tell you. And the ones I answer to—well, maybe the less said, the better. But you poked your little stick in the wrong nest, my friends. You stirred up some wasps that ain’t shy about stinging.”
“It won’t make any difference,” Gideon said. The words were slurred but vehement.
Blakelock circled the table and took a pace towards him. “What’s that, vicar? Clearing your throat, were you?”
“I said, it won’t make any difference.” He spoke more forcefully this time. This wasn’t the daydream. It was all he was sure of. It was simple. “I saw what was done to them, the men you’re talking about. And the others, the ones you work for—it won’t matter how powerful or well protected they are, not to the one we’re looking for.”
Reaching Gideon’s side, Blakelock dropped to his haunches. He gave a low, seething whistle. “Well, there’s talk. That supposed to put the fear of God in me, is it? Listen, boy. I told you about the sort of company I keep. We ain’t quivering in our beds at the thought of your bogeyman. It’s us who’ll be coming for him.”
Gideon said nothing, but something flickered in the murk of his thoughts. For him.
What he was sure of, without ever knowing how.
Did a little bird tell you?
He felt Blakelock’s breath on his face as he bent nearer. “You didn’t think you were the only ones out looking, did you? Except unlike you and your gaffer, we’ve got some idea who we’re looking for.”
Simple. The simplest thing.
In the shadowy deeps, the bright trinket stirred and shivered free. The looks and answers Cutter had given him, testing him, urging him towards the fault in his thinking. He had not grasped it then, but now he saw.
This is how we made you, little bird.
He looked Blakelock in the eye. “No, you don’t. Whatever you think you know, it’s wrong.”
Blakelock stared for a moment, his face distended with contempt. Then he spat abruptly and seized Gideon’s left hand, splaying it flat beneath his own. “Right,” he said. “I was going to start with the princess there, but seeing as you like working your gob.”
He pivoted to get a better hold and Gideon did not struggle for long. He let his gaze drift as his smallest finger was prised apart and pinned. He studied the milky light beyond the net curtains, the sifted bodies of the trees. He saw something else. A quick and purposeful shadow. He lost it again.
Blakelock grunted and altered his stance, pressing his bulk close to Gideon’s face. Gideon twisted away to escape his odour. Then the tongs bit, capturing the frayed rim of his fingernail. He waited for the pain, letting himself weep silently.
The shape again, somewhere beyond Blakelock’s back. A dark glyph in the dissolving welter, but resolving itself. Becoming something.
“You ready, lad?” Blakelock meant to keep up his foul patter, even at this monstrous moment. “Took a bit of fiddling, what with you being a filthy little nail biter, but it’s always worth starting with the little ’un. Makes them think, Fuck me, how much worse is the next one going to be? Now then, let’s see about you.”
Gideon snuffled twice, then went still. A precise snick, a preliminary tearing. Then from its tiny perch the pain leapt screaming and clawing.
For a moment he could not see or hear. He felt himself sobbing, writhing against his bonds. It cost him effort, and it made the pain worse.
He was gone. He thought he had been gone a long while, but that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure anymore. Something hurt his head again, when the chair fell. And the bright new pain, scraping the rust from the other hurts. He wasn’t sure, but he saw it again, drifting up through the stained and brackish shallows. Something happening. Slow but not slow.
Milo. The shape was Milo, surging across an interval of daylight like ink spilled over porcelain. A gesture—a finger tensed for silence—then the shape, then Milo. Blakelock was enfolded, something urging and twisting him. It was silky and fierce. It was like ballet.
Gideon stirred and strained, wanting to see.
Milo must have broken Blakelock’s hand first, after wresting it away. Blakelock was clutching it and roaring, but Milo spun briskly on one heel and smashed the other into Blakelock’s kneecap. It buckled back, and Blakelock staggered and sank, but Milo was not waiting. He was everywhere, dipping and coiling. A slender knife flickered, and Blakelock was bleeding from the gut, from a slash above his eyes. He lashed out again, and still Milo swerved and considered, inflicting wounds like brushstrokes, like variations on a theme. The blade arced out from a sidestep, severing the tendons of Blakelock’s forearm.
He collapsed at last, barely struggling now, but Milo persisted calmly. Stooping, he clamped the bigger man’s hips under his shin and drove his blade into each of his haunches in turn. He watched impassively as Blakelock’s legs jerked and settled into stillness.
He rose and wiped his knife, but he shifted the flat of one foot to Blakelock’s neck, applying a carefully calibrated pressure.
“You can breathe but not speak, yes?” said Milo. He hardly seemed out of breath. When Blakelock wheezed in response, he nodded his approval. “Good. You talk very much, you know this? It is not professional, your manner. Now you must be quiet.”
Milo examined his own light wounds, then with a terse sigh he glanced over his shoulder. “I make my apologies. I would have come sooner, but I met others like this one. They detained me a little. You are not too much harmed?”
“We are perfectly fine,” Octavia answered.
Gideon wanted to say it too, wanted to be glad and alive, but he was slipping again. It had taken effort, just watching. He was slow with pain still and he didn’t understand. Only the one thing. The simple thing.
“Very good,” said Milo. “Now, forgive me. I must finish with this one before I release you. Is there anything you need from him?”
Gideon was lapsing now, swooning into a pinkish numbness. He hoped it would last. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear much. But he thought he understood.
Octavia was calling him, saying something about names. Know their names. Gideon, listen.
“Won’t matter,” he said, or thought he said. It was all right. The pain was everywhere and the world was fallen. It was all right. “Their names won’t matter to her. Their names or their ancient houses. Like dust. She will pass through them like dust.”
Somewhere near him, Milo spoke calmly. Some great beast snorted and raged. Hearing his confession maybe. Administering the last rites. Mea culpa. Tibi omnes angeli.
“Their names,” he said, or some other voice said. It didn’t matter. “They made her perfect, and she is coming. All the angels. Speak their names.”
11
“WELL,” SAID INSPECTOR CUTTER. He had been pacing for some time about the parlour at Leggett’s, and now he halted before the hearth. He bent to poke at the coals, then rose again, scrubbing at his jaw with his knuckles. “Well,” he said again.
He seemed ill at ease, and it was not a condition for which he was naturally equipped. It was uncomfortable to contemplate.
“Sir,” said Gideon, moving to get up. “Will you not take your seat?”
At Cutter’s insistence, Gideon occupied not his own customary armchair but the inspector’s, Miss Hillingdon being seated in Gideon’s usual place. This too was a thing without precedent, and although the two armchairs were alike, Gideon might just as well have been commanded to rest on an Alpine precipice.
The inspector ignored him. Returning his attention to the fire, he glared in dissatisfaction at the coals. “Look at this worthless dirt,” he grumbled. “A shovelful of gravel would be better. Do you feel that chill, Miss Hillingdon.”
Octavia appeared perfectly at home in the opposite armchair, her legs curled up beneath her as she sifted through a sheaf of yellowed papers. Gideon noticed, too, that her face now seemed all but unmarked. A scabbed fissure still showed where her lip had been split, and a bruised patch that was turning from violet to ochre, but there were no other signs of what she had endured. “It’s quite comfortable,” she said, not looking up. “You’re fussing, Inspector.”
“Fussing, my arse.” Cutter strode to the doorway. “When have you known me to fuss? I want my money’s worth, that’s all. Barney! Barney, there! Fetch in some decent coal, you little mongrel! And more of that—what is that tea called, Miss Hillingdon?”
“Chamomile,” said Octavia. “But there’s really no need. I’ve hardly touched this cup.”
“It will be stone-cold, then,” the inspector answered. “How could it be otherwise in this accursed morgue? Another cup of that chamomile tea, boy, before the lady perishes from the frost!”
He paced the floor again, then he fixed Gideon with a rigorous look. “What about you, Bliss? Will you not take a small brandy? I will allow it under the—” He swept out his hand, indicating a swathe of contingencies. “Well, matters being as they are.”
“He has already had a small brandy,” said Octavia, answering on Gideon’s behalf. “You insisted on it, though it was ‘very much at odds with your way of thinking.’ He’s fine, aren’t you, Gideon? We’re both fine.”
“Oh, yes,” said Gideon, tucking his bandaged fingers under his haunches. It had been two days, and he could now flex them without much discomfort. His face was still puffed up and discoloured on one side, and Dr. Carmody had advised that the stub of his missing tooth be drawn out to prevent “the incitement of abscesses and other sequelae.” His injuries had otherwise troubled him remarkably little. It was the sleeplessness that disquieted him, and the episodes—he had so far kept them hidden—of cold and implacable rage. “We’re quite recovered, on the whole.”
The inspector grunted. “I will have Carmody look at you again. You have a twitch I do not like the look of, and taking knocks to the head like that—I knew a fellow once, a fine stout Cornishman who was stable master over at the Yard. He was kicked by a horse, near enough between his eyes, but he declared he was right as rain. Went about the place singing ‘Hail to the Homeland’ for a week and a half, then one morning he was filling the manger, and what happened? He dropped down dead, with blood fairly spurting from his—”
