The Ripper Affair

Chapter Thirty-Nine Once The Temptation Is Large Enough

The tiny little court growing from Dorsitt Street was crammed with bluecoated bobbies and others, jostling and elbowing. It was better than the crush outside, where it seemed every criminal, unfortunate, or poor tradesman in Londinium had come to gawk. Aberline’s authority carried them to a hacked-apart door guarded by a very pale young man in bluecloth. There was a large wet stain to one side of the door, and a broken window.

Clare’s heart sank. He shook off sentiment, steeled himself, and peered into the darkness.

Beside him, Pico made a strangled noise. The lad turned, fumbled past the bobby, and heaved just where a similar viewer of the scene had, right onto the wet reeking splash that should have been covered by Scab.

The lad’s eyes had been better than his. He took two uncertain steps, lifting the lanthorn one of the Yard men outside had surrendered to Aberline.

There was a low punky glow from the fireplace. The kettle on the hob had melted, warped by unimaginable heat.

Beside him, Aberline cursed softly. There was a rancid burp rising in Clare’s throat, he denied it.

Behind them, Mikal’s step was soundless, but his presence pushed against Clare’s back, along with prickles of gooseflesh.

The glimmers described…

Long dark curling hair, knocked free of its womanly confinement. Nakedness, indecent enough, but the gaping hole and shredded flesh… flayed thighs, the white gleaming of bone, the marks where a dexterous knife had dug in and the thing had feasted… feasted upon…

Control yourself, Clare. He realised, quite calmly, that he had handed the lanthorn to Aberline. Crazy shadows danced over the rotting walls. There was a hole in one corner of the room, the floorboard wrenched up.

He found his busy fingers working his left glove off.

There was very little that could shock or disgust a mentath. He realised, foggily, that he had perhaps found one way to do so. His faculties shivered under the assault, and he was very, very close to becoming a useless, porridge-brained idiot.

He brought his left hand to his mouth and bit in, savagely.

The pain of teeth in flesh was a bright arrow, striking the centre of his brain. It shocked him into some manner of rationality, and he found himself with a mouthful of bloody saliva, staring at the battered body on the bed.

Aberline had said something. Mikal’s reply was a short, grating curse. The Shield had approached the bed, his shoulders rigid, and bent closer. How he could stand to have his face so near the…

Clare bit down again. It worked, but only just. He blinked, furiously, shutterclicks of dim, roseate light striking him as fists. The face had been stabbed, cheeks laid open, the teeth…

Wait.

Mikal’s gaze met his. The Shield had turned from the bed, and the colourless sizzle around him was rage.

The teeth. They were not pearly little perfect white soldiers standing on their curved, rosebud-pink hills. They were discoloured, one or two under the opened flaps of cheekflesh decayed. The shape of the ear he could see was wrong as well, and it bore no hurtful little mark of piercing for bright earrings to dangle from.

The relief threatened to do what the sight of the body had not, and drive him to his knees. He swayed, the lanthorn swinging crazily again as Aberline caught his arm.

The hand that lay curiously unmarked to one side was small and delicate, but it was not soft, nor did it bear the indentation of rings. Chapped and reddened, it was a hand that had seen much weather and some measure of hard work.

His faculties, shocked, began functioning again. “Ah.” He cleared his throat, again, and the smell struck him. The bowels had been opened… had the creature eaten them, too, and whatever offal they contained?

How very interesting.

Mikal read his expression, and the Shield actually staggered as well. When he regained his equilibrium, he strode across the room. He brushed past Clare like a burning wind, sparing Aberline only the briefest of glances, and halted in the doorway.

“Mentath?”

Clare found his voice. “It is… it is not. Her. It is not her.”

Mikal nodded, once. “Work quickly.” He stepped outside, and Clare wondered if he would lose whatever dinner he had partaken of as well. There was a murmur–Pico, and Mikal’s toneless reply.

What work is to be done here? But he knew. There had to be some clew, some small detail that would lead them in the proper direction. Miss Bannon evidently had faith in his abilities, and was trusting her life to him.

Unfortunately, a mentath suffering irrational waves of Feeling would have even more difficulty untangling a sorcerous crime than one who was not so burdened by… relief? Hope? What was the dashed word for it?

It did not matter.

“Are you certain?” Aberline, curiously hushed. “Or did you tell him so because…”

“I am quite certain.” Clare drew in a deep breath, wished he had not. He examined the kettle on the hob, melted and scarred. Scraps of charred cloth–had he burned her dress to give himself light? Or was it sorcerous in nature? “What do you make of this?”

Aberline drew the lanthorn closer. He cast an uneasy glance at the bed, with its hideous cargo. “Perhaps to delay her identification? Or some sorcerous reason… or perhaps he needed light to work by.”

“The creature preferred darkness before. What sorcerous reason?”

“See the rings in the metal, there? And there? Chrysfire. Untraceable, unlike witchflame.” Aberline dug in his pocket, wiped his forehead with a wilting handkerchief. “It bears little stamp of the kindler’s personality. Sorcery is a distinctly personal art.”

“Miss Bannon often remarked as much.” Clare crouched, Aberline holding the lanthorn higher to shed some gleams upon the charred mess. “Quite a bit of cloth. None of it the quality that a lady might wear.”

Aberline glanced back at the bed, struck by a thought. “Her teeth. Of course. It cannot be her. I am a fool. Well, what do we do now? I confess I am at a loss.”

“You will not like the direction my thoughts are tending.”

“I fancy I won’t.”

“Most poppy users reserve a small amount, rather in the manner of a talisman against want of the substance.” As do most users of coja. Perhaps a fraction of that sweet white powder would help. Clare shut the thought away. “Do you?”

“You are correct.” Aberline had gone pale. “You wish me to…”

A gleam caught Clare’s eye. He leaned forward. How odd. “A button,” he murmured. “A very familiar one, at that.”

“What?” Mystified, Aberline nevertheless lowered the lanthorn a touch.

“Why on earth would the creature burn its own coat, too?” He settled on his heels. “Mikal. He might know.” The ashes were still warm, but Clare’s fingers had lost none of their deftness. He tossed the button from palm to palm, rather like a baked potato, and saw with some satisfaction that he was correct. It had the faint impress of a ship’s anchor upon its false-brass face, and though deformed by heat it was indubitably the same button the Coachman-thing had worn upon its coat.

“In any case,” he continued, “this is an item from the creature’s coat. I believe a physical object can be of use in finding a certain person’s location?”

“Sympathy? I have none of the power for such an operation.” Aberline had gone quite pale.

“Let us hope Mikal does.” Clare straightened, rising. “For he may compel you to attempt, power or no.”

A few questions elicited the most likely name of the unfortunate upon the bed–Marie-Jinnete, surnamed Kelly, also called Black Mary. She had retired to her room after dark with a customer, and not been discovered until one of her other suitors or customers returned to batter at her door and make quite a scene, thinking her unfaithful.

Which of course she was, and had paid harshly for it. She had been many shillings behind on the rent for the sad little corner she inhabited, which no doubt led to the decision to peer through the broken window, and consequently force the door.

The missing sorceress had most likely been nowhere near this corner of Whitchapel during the night.

The Shield’s face was as white as Aberline’s, and just as set. The Yard men in the small court–named after a miller, though there had likely never been one of that persuasion plying his trade here–were at the other end, doing their best to hold back the crowd. Mikal’s long coppery fingers turned the small lump of metal over, thoughtfully. “He does not have the power,” he said, finally, jutting his chin at Aberline. “And I may only use such a Sympathy in close proximity to my Prima.”

“How close?” Clare all but hopped from foot to foot.

Mikal shrugged. “Within her very presence. I do not understand, though–if she is alive, I should feel her…” His pause was matched by a curious change in expression. “Unless…”

“Unless?” Clare prompted.

Was it hope, dawning on the Shield’s features? Weary, disbelieving hope, perhaps. “Unless she is far underground, or behind certain defences. Hothin’s water-wall, for example, or a muirglass.”

“Underground?” A little colour had come back to Aberline’s face. “Hm.”

The silence that grew about them had all the crackling urgency of the breath before a storm’s breaking.

Clare let them cogitate. Beside him, the lad Pico had tensed too, as a bloodhound scenting prey.

“Scare’s Row.” Pico sported feverish spots on both cheeks, and kept wiping his mouth nervously. His shoulder touched Aberline’s, and neither moved away from the contact. The situation was rather beginning to paper over their personal differences, and it was high time, too. “Fan End, too.”

“Crithen’s Church.” Aberline nodded. “That’s where I’d go.”

“Do speak clearly, sirs.” Clare eyed the crowd at the end of the court. There was an air of carnivorous festival about the whole scene he did not quite like, even if he was heartened to find all four men upon whom Miss Bannon was now depending finally behaving reasonably

“Tunnels. From the Pax Latium, it’s said. Sometimes they’re rumoured to have beasts living in them, like near the Tower.” Pico made as if to spit, reconsidered. “Bad business, all of them.”

“Dark holes. Worst sinks in Whitchapel. Some of them host ginhouses; if the drink does not blind you, a knife may.” A fey light was slowly dawning on the inspector’s features. “Why did I not think on it before? A mad sorcerer, hiding there… sending his creature forth… using the tunnels as a means to move undetected… hm. Yes, Crithen’s Church is where I would start. The deeper holes are all about that location, the ones even the flashboys and Thin Meg’s starvelings don’t venture into.”

Clare jammed his hat more firmly upon his head. “Then there we shall go. Mr Mikal, once we are underground, will you be able to sense Miss Bannon?”

“Perhaps.” His hand flicked, and the button disappeared. “This may be useful, if we draw close enough.”

Clare struggled with himself, and lost. “Can Inspector Aberline’s powers, such as they are, be magnified in some manner?”

Mikal stilled, and so did Aberline. “There are ways,” the Shield admitted, and viewed the inspector afresh. “Blood, for one.”

“None of that.” Aberline backed up two steps, his steps loud on the Scabless ground.

“We have other methods,” Clare said, hastily. “You have a small amount of poppy, Aberline.”

The man’s reply was unrepeatable, but it satisfied Clare that he did, in fact, possess a small lump of said substance. Not that it mattered–any apothecary could be induced to part with enough laudanum to replicate the effect, should it come to such a thing.

Finding Miss Bannon outweighs any injury to his pride, Clare told himself. He did not care to think further upon the chain of logic–what else did it outweigh? His life? Clare’s? Or, it could not, for Clare was made proof against such things.

Sacrificing another was so easy, was it not? Once the temptation was large enough. Once the Feeling outweighed pure logic. How did Emma bear such storms of emotion, without a mentath’s skills to shield her? How had she borne his accusations? And Valentinelli’s death–how could he have thought her unmoved?

Concentrate, Clare. “Very well. To the carriage. Pico, climb up with Harthell and direct him to this church. Mikal, do bring Inspector Aberline, and make certain no harm comes to him.”

He set off for the mouth of the court, and his face crumpled for a moment before resmoothing itself. For he had realised something.

First, that he had sounded exactly like Miss Bannon. And second, he had no particular qualm about shedding the good inspector’s blood.

Should it become necessary.